


Between the End and the Beginning

by SuperiorDimwit



Series: The End of the Beginning [3]
Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Deleted Scenes, Doodles, Gen, M/M, Randomness, Requests, The End of the Beginning universe, What-If, there will be smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 55,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4676381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperiorDimwit/pseuds/SuperiorDimwit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of scenes that could have taken place in The End of the Beginning if they had made sense with the story. Most of the time they don't. This is a doodle collection of reader requests, holiday specials, what-ifs with alternative developments to main story scenes, and random stuff that just comes to mind. It's simply all the things that fall in Between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Concerning skirts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In **Terra ch 28** , Shiro kept himself from asking about skirts when he and Mephisto rode to Tokyo airport. **XxAlysxX** wanted to know what would happen if he asked. She was even kind enough to draw fanart of it! Thank youuuuuuu! QuQ
> 
> http://yfangirl1613.deviantart.com/art/Shiro-336829848

At a restaurant somewhere in True Cross Town sat two men who didn't really know how they got there. Neither of them was a man either, technically, but they were in the kind of state where one tends not to care about technicalities, and certainly not how they ended up where they were. The matters that did occupy the alcohol-addled minds of these men were of far deeper importance than so.

"Hey, Mephisto-san...? I was just thinking..." No, that was a lie. And a quite bad one, too. If he had been thinking he wouldn't have opened his mouth in the first place. "Do you ever wear skirts?"

"What kind of ridiculous question is that?" Mephisto had a horrible tolerance for alcohol, but compensated for it by being smart enough not to drink as much as Shiro had. Even so, he did look a bit... fuzzy. "Who in their right mind would wear a skirt with a tailcoat?"

"Just thinking it would go well with your legs, izzall." He poured himself another cup of saké and managed to get at least most of it in the cup. "I'm drunk, aren't I? I'm thinking about a dude in a skirt." It was mildly disturbing, really.

"In vino veritas, as the Romans said", Mephisto snickered, sipping from his cup. "No, I'm more in favor of ballroom dresses. Very elegant, move gracefully when one walks, perfect for hiding one's tail~"

"Right..." He nodded to himself, a drunken smile plastering his face as images... Wait, hang on... "...tail? You have a tail?"

"I  _am_  a demon", he reminded, eyebrows rising.

Shiro's mental picture of Mephisto in True Cross Academy's female school uniform was marred by a long, arrow-tipped tail sticking out from under the skirt.

"Alright. You would look better in a ballroom dress."

"I do."

"So you have worn one?"

"Why, are you very eager to see me in one? The saké unlocking some inhibited desires you won't acknowledge~?"

"Well, if you're up to it..." Shiro's lips stretched into a playful smile, scooting closer to the demon. "'Cause I really do have an inhibited desire... to yank that curl."

"To-?"

With dexterity that belied three-quarters of a flask of saké, Shiro grabbed the offending strand of hair and tugged.

"Ouch! Ow ow ow ow, what are you doing?!" Mephisto grabbed Shiro's wrist in one hand and his curl in the other, trying to separate the two as painlessly as possible. He almost succeeded: then he instinctively leaned backwards, away from his drunk student, forgetting that he himself wasn't entirely sober. The leaning turned into falling, and the grip on Shiro's wrist dragged him down on top of him.

"Mud-monkey!" he growled at the face that was so close their noses touched.

"You're cute when you're angry, Mephisto-pon", Shiro grinned.

"Oh, really?" His fingers snapped once, and suddenly Shiro's legs felt very cold. "You're cute when you're wearing the girls' uniform. Enjoy your walk back to the dorms." And with a second snap, he was gone.

"Oh shi-"


	2. Concerning bathrobes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In **Terra ch 41** , Shiro has to walk back to his dorm in Mephisto's bathrobe. What if somebody had begun asking questions...? **XxAlysxX** was wondering.

"Shiro-san...?" Shizuku gawked at him when he opened the door. "Just what the  _fuck_  are ye wearin'?"

"It's called a bathrobe. I'm told the colour brings out my hair nicely", he smiled. Well, what the hell was he supposed to do? If you've been forced to walk home in a purple bathrobe you really only have two options: laugh at it, or kill yourself. "Ryuuji-san had a run-in with the Ice Queen. He's in my room at the moment, but I thought I should let you know. He'll come over when he feels better."

"Figures", Shizuku sighed. "An' what did you have a run-in with? The dark secret in ye' closet?"

"The pond down in the park, actually."

Shizuku leaned against the wall and shook his head.

"Man, if I  _could_  make a charm 'gainst stupidity, I'd give ye one straight away." The corner of his lip quirked into a crooked grin. "Does bring out ye hair, though."

"Yeah, the old lady who lent it to me said so, too." Shiro's deep-frozen facial muscles pulled a stiff grimace. Mephisto had good memory, alright: he'd apparently remembered that the pink yukata he'd lent him last time didn't go with his hair.

"Old lady?" Shizuku cocked an eyebrow at the garment. "That'd be the first time I see an ol' lady six feet tall. Or more." His head turned slight to the side, and his eyebrows knitted together as he eyed the bathrobe toe to head. "Come ta think of it, I haven't seen anybody tall enough ta wear somethin' like that." His eyes lingered at the collar. "An' that looks an awful lot like an 'M'."

"It does?" Shiro pulled at the collar to look at the monogram, buying time to come up with some way to lead the conversation in a different direction. "I didn't ask her name. Could be her husband's, I s'pose. She did say she'd kept it after he-"

"Ye're naked under that...?" Shizuku's gaze grew... awkward.

"Wouldn't do much good with a bathrobe if I was still soaked like a drowned rat under it", Shiro observed. "I've hung my clothes in the laundry room to let them dry."

"Alright, ye've got a quick mouth", the pilgrim said, nailing him with a less casual gaze than usual. "But ye're not gettin' away with it this time. I'm gonna ask one question, only one, an' I want an honest answer to it. Does that 'M' stand fe' Mephisto Pheles?"

What would he say? Yes? He'd have to explain the whole thing, Knight practice, and Shizuku would wonder why Mephisto took such an interest in him of all students...

"...no."

It takes very little time to produce a single-syllable reply. When Shiro replied, that time was already passed.

"It doesn't bother me, ye know", Shizuku said, keeping his face surprisingly straight. "I've met all kinds on the road, none better or worse than the other. Wouldn't think ye were the type - but then again, ye clearly have a taste fe' demons." He made a half-hearted attempt to hide the grin spreading over his face behind his hand, but the glimmer in his eyes was filled with mischief. "Spent Christmas with no other company than each other, wazzit? Well well, an' a Merry Christmas it must've been..."

Shiro had never blushed so hard in his life. Which would only confirm Shizuku's misconception.

"It's NOT like that." Oh, splendid. Didn't that sound like just the kind of thing one would say when it  _is_  like that? "All he did for Christmas was to read his manga and draw, and I _slept_.  _Nothing_  happened, and it's NOT what you think!"

"...it can't be that  _he_  drew that picture of ye?" Shizuku's grin widened to Mephistophelic proportions. "The one tucked away- Oh, of course; the one  _hidden_  away in ye' course book!"

"He did NOT!"

"It had a date on the back, ye know." Any more now, and the corners of his mouth would split. "Christmas 1975. An' ta think that I bought yer story 'bout some orphanage kid...!"

"Shizuku, for the love of god, it's NOT what you think! He's giving me lessons on how to use a sword! I only borrowed this 'cause his stupid familiar dumped me in the water and he could only get my clothes off and- Hell, not like that! He snapped his fingers and my clothes went poof, but he couldn't poof me away, so I had to borrow this until they dried!"

"Sounds like very interesting... lessons", he grinned, barely able to contain his glee. "'e snaps 'is fingers, an' ye' clothes come off..."

Sometimes, Shiro grudgingly had to admit, it was probably better to tell the truth. Otherwise, people might make up their own truths without asking, and such truths are difficult to correct.

 


	3. Concerning lost bets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were many who wondered what would have happened if Shiro had lost the bet in **Terra ch 45** , when he challenged Mephisto to a duel. What would Mephisto have made him do during that year...? **wildkurofang** asked, and this is the answer.
> 
> References are to _Majokko Megu-chan_ and _Rose of Versailles_ , which are both series popular in the 70's.
> 
> Grace of **Zeitdieb** , this incident now has fanart! :D (I love you, man!)
> 
> http://time-king.deviantart.com/art/Tribute-to-BtEatB-Shiro-Mephisto-Cosplaying-350926600
> 
> http://time-king.deviantart.com/art/Tribute-to-BtEatB-Shiro-Mephisto-Cosplaying-2-351227357

In retrospect, it had been doomed to fail. Beat Mephisto at swordplay? No chance in hell. Shiro's plan had failed miserably, and now… he was paying the price for it.

A higher price than he could ever have imagined.

"I will kill you for this", he stated bluntly.

"No you won't~"

It would be difficult, yes, but he would do it. He would.

"Unless you stop rubbing your butt up against mine, I'll do it right here and now. Oh fucking-" Yes, he would kill Mephisto. And then he would kill himself. "Those girls that just passed by are in my class", he groaned, holding the stupid back-to-back pose for the stupid tourist with his stupid camera. "I think they recognised me."

"So?" Mephisto said idly, blowing a kiss to the photographer as he put his arm around Shiro's waist and led him on.

"I'm wearing a dress shorter than their skirts, you idiot! If I didn't have the umbrella open behind me I'd be flashing my underwear to all of Tokyo!"

"Too bad the umbrella is transparent, then~"

Shiro suspected his face would soon be the same colour as his bright ginger wig. He closed the useless umbrella, pondering how to deal maximum damage to Mephisto with it.

"And why", he grated, eyebrow twitching spastically as he tried to pull the dress hem down and prevent further wardrobe malfunction, "couldn't you do this on your own?"

"But Shiro!" The exclamation was appalled, but not for the right reason. "They're a team! You can't cosplay Non without having Megu, that's like having a moon without sun!"

"Then why couldn't I be Non? At least your costume covers  _something_!"

"Purple is my favourite colour – and I look absolutely ghastly in orange. Besides, Non's eye-shadow goes well with my eyes." Mephisto happily twirled a tress of long, wavy fake hair around his finger. "And you refused to wear make-up anyway, Megu-chan~" he smirked, slapping Shiro's butt.

"Next time you decide I have to cosplay with you, you're getting me a character with trousers."

It couldn't get worse than this, anyway. Nothing could possibly be worse than-

Fuck.

"...there's nothing I can say right now that could save this situation, right?"

"Nope", said the little pixie with a wicked grin. Honda Kasumi, the female pilgrim with tongue sharper than any blade. Of course she had to be there. Of course. "Fancy meeting ya here, Shiro-kun." The grin grew wider. "Or is that 'Shiro-chan'~?"

"For what it's worth, I lost a bet", he explained. The last thing he needed was for Kasumi to tell Shizuku about this...

"I see", she chuckled. "Well, I admire ye fe' going through with it, that's gotta be-" Kasumi's gaze was drawn upwards, and her eyes widened in shock. "Sir Pheles...?"

"Why, pleased to meet you, Miss Honda~"

Kasumi struggled visibly to control her facial features.

"Ya both lost bets, then...?"

"He lost", Mephisto said with a grin before Shiro could open his mouth. "I won."

That... was the last drop for Kasumi's composure.

"I think I need ta be goin'... S'cuse me..."

"You've ruined my life", Shiro said flatly, watching Kasumi wobble away doubled over in laughter. "That story will travel with her all over Japan."

"It would anyway~ One of those photographers was from the newspaper."

Shiro covered his eyes with his hand and let out an abysmal groan.

"That's it: I'll be the first man in history to commit seppuku with an umbrella..."

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, Mephisto wasn't unreasonable: he was just a jerk that twisted your requests into nightmare-versions of what you asked for.

"You have trousers", the demon pointed out with a grin three-miles wide.

"I also have a sword", Shiro hissed against the clawed hand he was kissing. "And I just might help the queen off with her head once the tourists have gone."

"Oh, but you're my valiant, ever-faithful bodyguard, aren't you~?" The hand twisted to grasp Shiro's, and pulled him up from kneeling position to-

"I am so not doing that."

"What, you can't dance?"

"No, I can't, and I'm  _not_ putting my arm around you even if I could!"

"It's the Queen's orders, Colonel de Jarjayes: remember, you lost the bet~" he purred, and cast an eye at their audience, "and I need to remind the swooning courtiers that you answer to the Queen alone."

Shiro pushed the blonde curls out of his face and cursed himself for the three-hundred-and-fifty-eighth time for accepting that bet. He placed his hand on the waistline of the extravagant Renaissance dress and took Mephisto's hand in his other. Damn that licentious bastard to the darkest pits of-

"Now now, that's not the touch of a devoted secret admirer~" Mephisto moved Shiro's hand to the small of his back, and in the process pulled Shiro so close they stood chest-to-chest. Indeed, there were courtiers swooning and cheering… And taking pictures… What the hell was wrong with girls, didn't they know Oscar de Jarjayes was a woman…? "I've been wanting to do this for ages, but I never got anyone to do it with me!" Mephisto was beaming enough to match the rosy rouge on his cheeks.

"I wonder why…"

"Yes, I should have thought of this before. You have such a good build for uniforms."

"Would you just shut up and-"

The crowd exploded in high-pitched squeals and camera flashes as Mephisto planted a kiss on Shiro's lips.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

"Going behind the scenes in the manga: it's obvious that Oscar is drawn to both Marie Antoinette  _and_ Rosalie."

"You  _kissed_ me, you jerk!"

"You're right", he said, pursing his lips with a troubled look. A troubled look that did nothing to hide the wicked glee in his eyes. "My bad: we're in France, so it should be a French kiss…"

Women in Renaissance France were completely disabled from running, both from too heavy dresses, too uncomfortable shoes, and too tightly laced corsets: Shiro was immensely grateful that Oscar Francois de Jarjayes had the good taste to wear trousers and army boots.

 


	4. Concerning paths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter in BtEatB that is entirely out of the doodle dump itself. If you've read ch 2 and 3, you should have no problem following what's happening. This is from inspiration from **Pheles-chan** and a very, very tired Dimwit with no willpower to do a maths exam.

You learn many things on the road. You learn which ones to trust and which ones to mistrust. You fine-tune your senses to danger and learn that sometimes your gut knows better than your head.

When that inconspicuous knock rattled on the door, Shizuku's gut told him it was trouble. He approached soundlessly – and was answered by the same silence from the corridor: somebody on the other side of the door was holding his breath and waiting like a cobra.

Shizuku silently counted down from three…

...jerked the door open...

...dodged the wooden staff thrust at his abdomen...

...grabbed it...

...and yanked the assailant in.

"Woo~ Ain't lost the touch, despite bein' ground-bound."

She twirled the staff back around with ease and tossed it on Shizuku's unmade bed.

"Tch, should'a known", he grinned and pulled the petite little woman into a bear hug. "Doin' good, aye? Ye're heavier, at least…" Kasumi squeaked happily as he lifted her; he'd always enjoyed doing that, ever since it was clear he would be the only one to inherit their father's height. "That a little niece or nephew o' mine buddin'?"

"Ye callin' me fat, that's what ye're doing...? Those buds are in the right place, y'know! Lemme down, ya big oaf! I wanna have a look at ya'."

Kasumi eyed him up and down the way only a big sister can: critically, and with infinite love.

"…how boring." She pulled a face. "Ye're neither thinner or thicker. Or shorter."

"Yeah yeah: been hearin' that fer a while", he chuckled and offered her the chair from the desk. She plopped herself down on the desk – or up, if you were picky. "What news from the roads?"

"Oh, I got news alright~" she grinned impishly. "Popped by the convention over in Tokyo ta have a look at the weird folks, an' guess who I run into? Ye' dear ol' classmate with the big mouth: Shiro-kun. Or rather, Shiro-chan." Her grin grew wider, and her eyebrows rose suggestively. "All dainty an' dressed up as that girl from Majokko Megu-chan."

Shizuku sat –  _fell_ – into the chair, slapping his leg and laughing his lungs out.

"Oh I can see it; that stupid son of a-fuahahahahaaaa oh sweet Buddha…!"

"Oi, I'm- I'm not done yet!" she gasped in between roars of laughter. "Ye know who was dressed up as Megu-chan's partner…? Yer one an' only Sir Mephisto Pheles!"

"Ahahahahahah! Ahah-haah-ahahahahaaa yeah I can see it, I can see it wahaahahahaha oh I-fuehehehehahaha I'm still gonna… still gonna-heheheheheeee still gonna beat ya'…!" he breathed, shaking with laughter from head to toe. "I got news from here that'll kukukuku oh goodness…! I got news that'll make ye chin hit ye' chest…!"

"Not that much of a drop, then", she said, sticking the tip of her tongue out between the teeth of an impish grin. "Better than a human cross-dressin' with a demon? Go ahead 'n' knock my ears off, Shizzy~"

He collected himself to a minimum of composure, still grinning like a wolf at his sister.

"Cross-dressin's nothing~ Few weeks ago, our dear Fujimoto Shiro came walkin' in here dressed in Sir Pheles' bathrobe: dressed  _only_ in Sir Pheles' bathrobe."

Kasumi's face imploded, and unleashed a hurricane of laughter that almost had her toppling off the desk.

"Ye win! Wahahahahahaaaa oh ye win, Shizzy! Ahah-hah-ahahahaheheheheeee! Ah-ah-I'm getting cramps…! Ahahahahahhaha so  _that's_  why…!" She clutched her midriff, struggling to breathe. "Got kicked outta bed by a disgruntled lover, did 'e…?"

"Oh, 'e tried ta explain it, ye should a' seen – blushin' like a boiled crayfish! He went all 'it's NOT like that!' an' sputtered like a hot kettle!"

"Oh, it  _is_ like that~" Kasumi chuckled knowingly, shaking her head softly. "Shiro-kun, Shiro-kun, so bold and so shy… It's cute, really. Never would a' guessed he was the type."

"Me neither." Shizuku wiped a few laughing tears off his cheeks. "But I told ye 'bout his fling with Midori-chan, didn't I? 'e seems ta fancy demons as much as they fancy him."

" _That_ type he is, definitely. Good match, 's far 's I can tell. Sir Pheles is quite the looker, an' Shiro-kun's got a real nice body." Laughter touched her lips again, and she shook her head and sprinkled it into the room. "But how they keep from tearin' each other's throats out, I don't get. Have ya seen Pheles' office?" she asked, looking up at Shizuku. "It's a damn palace parlour, all creamy silk an' dark varnished wood. An' Shiro-kun with is tie all sloppy like that, hands in 'is pockets an' a cigarette in 'is mouth – pff, an' that mouth 'e's got!" Kasumi made an illustrative motion. "Like night an' day."

"Night an' day; opposites by nature, and yet they blend seamlessly."

"Ye sound so much like dad", she smiled in the pause that followed.

"It grows on ye, I guess…" Shizuku scratched the back of his head absentmindedly. "'is khakkhara's ova' there, in the corner by the bed." Tall and proud and weathered, just like he had been. "He should a' left it te you."

At this, Kasumi huffed, crossing her legs and letting the top one swing casually up and down.

"I've got my walking stick." She cocked her head at the piece of wood dirtying Shizuku's sheets. "It's my third leg an' right arm. Wouldn't want any other."

"Yeah, but ye were the eldest." He may be taller, and stronger… but when he looked at Kasumi, he always felt like the little brother. The only brother. The only son. "An' a much better exorcist than I."

"I've walked farther than you", she smiled down at him from the desk. "That doesn't mean I need a fancier walking stick. Ye were the one that said ya wanted ta go ta exorcist school, learn new ways ta protect people: ye were the one that was prepared ta walk new paths." She nodded her head in direction of the old battered khakkhara in the corner, smiling. "That there's a guide's staff. It's fe' the ones that walk up front an' lead the way fer others: not 'cause they're strong enough ta lead", she poked a finger at his forehead, "but because they possess a strength that spurs people ta follow."

"Ye sound like mom", he smiled at her. "An' I know fer a fact dad wouldn't 'ave walked many paths with that staff if it hadn't been for her."

You learn many things on the road. You learn by walking: new paths, old paths, strange paths... but most importantly, intersecting paths. Intersecting paths that bring others to you: some that will follow, some that will lead... some as similar as dew drops in the grass, and some as different as night and day.

 


	5. Concerning intersecting paths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a part two to "Concerning paths" that just wanted to be written. It draws a little from **Inferno ch 6** , but only a little. This doodle was inspired by **Pheles-chan**.

Intersecting paths bring you many different people: some that will follow, some that will lead... some enemies, some friends...

Friends are the people that have your back, come hell or high water: the ones that are so determined to help you they unintentionally make everythingworse. And some friends... some intersecting paths... make it a lot worse.

* * *

"I think I'll just keep it as it is." Shiro pondered his thoughts out loud to himself. It was a beautiful spring day, and he had declined the pleasure of cigarettes to catch the faint once-a-year smell of cherry blossoms in the air. "I've come this far in my Meisters, I'm doing well in all of them, and summer break is just around the corner. No need to drop any subjects with so little time left."

"A wise choice", said the little white dog trotting next to him at comfortable pace. "Come next semester, your high school years are over and you will have many extra hours for exorcist education."

"Yup. And if I can graduate to Lower Second Class, I can start earning payment as exorcist. Until then I'll have to look for part-time jobs."

"The Academy can always use more janitors", Mephisto suggested. In a purely helpful, one-friend-to-another manner, of course.

"Couldn't you find a more degrading task for me to do? Scraping chewing gum and bird shit from park benches or something?"

"That would be part of your duties as a janitor", the dog replied blithely, completely missing the surly note in Shiro's voice.

The evening cool brought out the smells of spring most terrifically. Of all the parks near campus, this was the one richest in flowering trees: it was also the one most popular with romantic couples, but this week was littered with exams and didn't invite to evening strolls under the fragrant pink clouds.

Mephisto had picked the route only because he knew Shiro would smell the flowers rather than smoke: the latter of which he never failed to complain about whenever they went for a stroll.

"Oi, Shiro-kun!"

Shiro stopped and turned, recognising the voice but caught entirely by surprise. Kasumi? Here?

"Finally: the man I wanna meet!" She walked towards them at brisk pace, her sizable breasts bouncing in a way that gave Shiro some hope of a romantic walk in the park after all. If only Mephisto would conveniently go poof. "Cute li'l fella ye have there." Kasumi sank down on her haunches to scratch the dog's chin: and oh, did he look smug about it… "What's 'is name?"

"Sammy."

The smug look disappeared with a huff and a glare that Shiro pretended to be blissfully unaware of.

"Yeah: anyway." She stood up again, directing her attention back to him. "How's ye love-life comin', Shiro-kun?"

"Uh…" Talk about straightforward. "Rather empty at the moment, unfortunately."

"Well, let's see if we can't fix that, then~" she smiled, and put her arm wound his waist.

Then again, straightforward can be pretty nice, too. It was Kasumi, after all: she didn't beat around the bush. Shiro followed suit and placed his arm around her shoulders.

"What's it that goes wrong?" she asked, striking up a slow walking pace. "Generally speaking."

In his relationships? Pff, that was an easy one. Just a bit… embarrassing. Especially with Mephisto trotting along next to them and hearing every word.

"Well, generally… speaking", he admitted, scratching the back of his head. "I always manage to say the wrong things."

"No surprise there", she said in analytical tones. "How do ya make up, then?"

"Uh… Make up…?"

"How d'ya settle things? Ye know: apologise…?"

"Uh… I… don't…?"

Usually he just tried his luck with some other girl; he never got so attached to any single one that he saw any use in staying around if things turned sour.

"Are ye fe' real?" she sighed with exasperation on every syllable. "Look, ye dimwit, talking is the most important part of a relationship. If ye don't talk ye'll misunderstand each other, an' if ye don't sort the misunderstandings out they'll grow like weed. An' that's when ye end up kicked outta bed. Ye followin' me?"

He nodded. It was a little disappointing that Kasumi wasn't interested in him herself, but it was sort of nice that she cared to give him advice on approaching girls. Or, well, keeping them.

"Good. Now, I dunno what kind 'a blunder ye've made, but whatever it is ye'll go apologise. An' bring a present."

Apologise…? To who? Must be an imagined scenario where he had offended a girl…

"Okay, I follow. What sort of present?"

"Everybody's got different tastes – I'm sure ya know better than I do", she grinned impishly. "Anyway: the right words an' the right gift an' ye should be forgiven. Though seeing as this is a rather special case, ye might have ta resort ta physical means." She winked at him. Why did she wink at him? What special case? Why was he feeling like he was totally missing some important point?! "If all else fails, a li'l seduction might be just the thing ta melt that heart back into ye' hands. Just wrap that 'gift' up in ye' Sunday best – or nothin' at all, tastes vary – an' show him a good time."

…there was a silence… inside Shiro's head… that shut down every thought he currently had…

Show  _him_ a good time?

A sudden "coughing fit" at ground level shattered the silence, and the shards of it rained down on his head like broken ice.

"No, you… Shit… Kasumi-chan, you've got it all wrong", he floundered ahead, torn between trying to save this mess and kicking the dog down a ravine. "I'm not- I'm not doing _anything_ with Pheles, that's-"

"No need ta be shy 'bout it, Shiro-kun." She patted his shoulder with a friendly smile that completely butchered his pride. "Lots'a people have demon lovers – maybe not as steady as you, but-"

"Jesus, Kasumi! I'm not sleeping with him!"

"Only wearin' his bathrobe when ye're walkin' home naked", she grinned knowingly. "Did ya pull 'is tail in bed or something?"

Shiro's face twisted into a grimace of severe internal pain. That blasted bathrobe…

"That's- Yeah, I  _know_ what that looked like, but it  _wasn't_ like that! I'm training with him to-"

"Learn to use a  _sword_?" she smirked, eyes sparkling with insinuation. "Well well, I'm sure he's a most  _skilled_ instructor~"

Shiro's face heated to the point he was sure his hair would catch fire. The dog pawed his nose frantically to ease an itch – or muffle bubbling laughter.

"Maybe ye could wear the Megu-chan dress, if 'e likes ye in that?" Kasumi mused ahead.

Somewhere… in a different dimension… this wasn't happening…

"For all that's holy, Kasumi-chan, I  _swear_ to you, I'm  _not_ sleeping with Pheles…!"

"Don't worry, I won't go tattle-telling on you", she ensured in confidant tones. "Wouldn't go down well with the Vatican, huh? They always were a backwards bunch. S' long as people are happy an' it doesn't harm anyone, why make a fuss, ye know?"

Shiro's heart sank with the realisation that, no matter what he said… Kasumi had already made up her mind about the state of things.

And if telling the truth doesn't help…

…you lie.

Anything to get her to stop talking, go away, and not give the little devil on four legs any more ideas.

"I wish more people could share that view of things", he forced out in a voice that sounded  _almost_  natural. " _Yeah, go ahead and laugh: I hope you choke on it_ ", he growled inwardly, hearing all too well how the dog had begun wheezing and hiccupping with constrained laughter. "But I appreciate that you…" Oh, he could see his reputation wave farewell as it went down the drain. "…that you think it's okay."

"Aww, aren't ya just too sweet fe' words?" she chuckled, and caught him in a hug. "'Course it's okay, silly", she smiled into his chest. "Never think anything else."

So perfect, and so wrong. Hugged under the cherry blossoms in the twilight, by a girl with E-cup, and she thought he was gay… If there is a god, he had a wicked sense of humour.

"Thank you." He returned the hug and stole a glance down over her shoulder. Mephisto returned it with the widest grin a dog can muster. " _I will kill you when she's left_ ", Shiro mouthed silently. "And thanks for your advice."

"It's nothin', Shiro-kun: just happy ta help. Best o' luck te you two", Kasumi smiled, and waved goodbye as she left to find herself accommodation for the night in town.

The smile immediately fell from Shiro's lips.

"Not. A. Word", he ground out, shooting murderous glares at the dog that had collapsed by the walkway, laughing too hard to stand.

"But Shiro~ Talking is the most important part of a relationship. Will I get gifts tonight, or later~?"

"You can get my boot up your ass right now if you don't shut up!" Shiro snarled before he could think. Always managed to say the wrong things, eh?

"I was rather hoping for some other part of you~"

Shiro snagged the dog by the scruff of his neck, hauling him up from the ground to shout right into his face:

"KEEP YOUR FILTHY IDEAS TO YOURSELF YOU DIRTY-MINDED PIECE OF-"

*poof*

So perfect, and so wrong.

All of a sudden, he was standing beneath the cherry blossoms, face inches from Mephisto's and his fingers threaded into the hair in the demon's neck.

"I like the fiery kind~" he said with a lewd smirk, and closed the distan-

Shiro pulled hard at the purple hair, and managed to get away with just a quick peck on the lips. That  _shameless_ son of a-

" _…just kill me._ "

"Not the words I would'a used, but it seems ta work anyway", Kasumi tittered gleefully, appearing out of his nightmares from around the bend she had turned moments earlier: and what a scene she got… "Not my intention ta interrupt, gents", she ensured, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. "Just fe'got a few things I was gonna drop off at my brother's."

"No harm done, dear Honda-chan", Mephisto said with a pleasant nod of his head. "On the contrary: thank you for talking to Shiro. Someone my age can't always speak the language required to still the fire in a young heart, but yours seem to touch just the right strings."

"Ye're too kind, Sir Pheles", she smiled, bowing in return. "I reared one younger brother, I should know the tricks. Be good, now." She winked at them. "No indecencies out in the open, hm?"

"Only minor such~"

Mephisto leaned closer…

" _I will kill you for this, you perverted old goat!_ "

He tasted of sweet candy and strong tea; a peculiar mix that made Shiro's lips tingle as if teased with hot pepper, and caused a tickling sensation to shoot through his jaw and curl trills in his eardrums.

"Minor?" Kasumi chuckled, a slight blush tinting her cheeks beautifully with the glow of cherry blossoms. "Just how long did yer dry spell quarrel drag out? I'll leave you two te your indecencies, alright."

She waved again, and set course for the dorms.

"Dirty-minded, double-crossing, sneaky son of a bitch!" Shiro snarled as soon as she was out of earshot. "You  _know_ I'm not into guys!"

"And you know I enjoy teasing you for it", he answered easily, cocking his head to the side with a content smirk. "And the more you complain, the more I enjoy it. The only reason you would keep complaining, despite that knowledge, is because you want me to tease you." A lewd, cunning look spread over his face. "It's clear that you secretly enjoy it."

Shiro gave him a dull stare.

"Are you daft? I complain because I  _don't_ enjoy it."

"Knowing full well that it will only spur me to push you more."

…seriously, he saw nothing wrong in that reasoning?

"Oh, you're suggesting I agree to it instead, then?" he said dryly. "Nice set of options, that. It's gonna take a little more than a demon's tongue to convince me that  _yes_  and  _no_  both mean  _yes_."

"Is that a challenge~?"

"No."

"I can think of a few ways to convince you…"

"No."

"You don't think you're being a little rash, saying you don't like something you've never tried?"

"No. I'll say it as many times as you like: no. No means no."

"Tsk tsk, those glasses really don't do you much good…" The corners of his lips curled slyly. "But all the same, you forgot to wipe your mouth."

And with a poof, Shiro was left to ponder that statement alone.

" _Tch, bastard…_ " He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and spat generously, but was forced to sacrifice the smell of cherry blossoms for a cigarette: better to numb his nose and taste buds than have his mouth filled with the taste of sweet candy and strong tea. " _What does he mean my glasses aren't doing much good...?_ "

* * *

Intersecting paths bring you many different people: some that will follow, some that will lead... some enemies, and some friends... As well as some myopic idiots that can't follow no matter how thoroughly their friends try to help and lead.

 


	6. Concerning landmarks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set some time after **Terra ch 46.** Doodle, Gecko, and I simultaneously cracked this idea. ^_^ I don't know if I'll work it into the main story or not, but for now it will be stashed here.
> 
> For the record, the Cathedral of Saint Vasilij IS the only one of its kind, and there ARE a whole lot of question marks concerning who designed it, and what happened to him. Nobody has been able to accurately determine where the design ideas came from, or why nothing else in Russian architectural history resembles this huge piece of weed-tripping fairytale castle.
> 
> (No offense to any Russian readers, but I kind of found your language impossible to speak. ^_^' Reading, fine, but speaking it is just pain in every muscle. The transcript is a bit winged: I don't know how ж is transcribed in Latin letters, but with the similar sound in Mandarin Chinese it's usually zh.)

"Will I get to go abroad, too?"

He asked mainly to get a reason to stretch his cramping arm and take a break from homework. Shiro had occupied the round table in Mephisto's office, as usual; and as usual, he kept his papers stacked in the middle of it. It wasn't practical, as far as organization and overview went, but any paper sticking out over the table edge was fair game to the wastebasket. And while it was god's honest truth, none of his teachers had bought the "a panda ate my homework" excuse.

"There is the possibility of applying for international exchange once you pass exorcist exams." Mephisto tipped his wrist, and the personnel report he was reading, to show a cheeky smirk. "Don't want me as your boss?"

"Oh, I'm sure that would have its perks, too~" he said with a deceitful smile. "You might want to put those papers down before you take a sip."

Mephisto halted the teacup he had been about to drink from. Not long, but long enough to show he had the spiked tea incident fresh in memory. Shiro's grin widened as he met the narrowing glare: and for a moment, they wore each other's expressions with absolute likeness to the original.

Eventually, Mephisto called his bluff and drank.

"I just brought it up 'cause Ryuuji-san got a postcard from his brother", Shiro picked up, idly toying with a cigarette he had no means of lighting. "He's stationed in Moscow. Says it's hell on earth except it's cold as a bitch, and full of demons feeding off the misery. Though maybe not in those words." Realising the potential of what he had just said, he shot Mephisto a sharp look. "You'd better not send me there."

"Would I~?"

"Oh yes: by airmail, for cheaper transport. Drop me off by parachute in a pile of snow and let me get eaten by bears."

"You do have an unfortunate tendency to form opinions of things you have no experience with", the demon stated with a cocked eyebrow.

"If you're trying to talk me into bed again, that's still a no", he said flatly, pointing his cigarette at Mephisto across the room.

"And a most amusing tendency to read into whatever I say", he smiled pleasantly. "Speaks quite a bit of what's on your mind, you know. I  _was_ , in fact, referring to the Soviet Union. It is far more than snow, bears and misery: its achievements in architecture are simply astounding, the wealth of the tsars poured into a magnificent display of-"

"You serious? That building on the postcard was like a gingerbread house built by some crazy magician. What was it called…?" He squinted and creased his brow. "Sabor Basiri Burashe…Bushiri…"

Mephisto gave him a blank look, though Shiro could tell he was running through his vast vocabulary for anything that could match the gibberish he was muttering.

"Sabor Vasilija Blazhenava? Cathedral of Saint Vasilij the Blessed?"

"There's a language that sounds worse than German? Wow…"

"There is nothing wrong with German!" he objected, eyebrows spiking downwards. "And nothing wrong with that cathedral – why, it's unique in the world! An unequalled masterpiece of architecture; so dazzling that the tsar is rumoured to have had the architect's eyes gouged out to prevent him from creating another."

"Yeah, I can see why he gouged the guy's eyes out. The thing's hideous. If I didn't know it was a church it'd chance a guess at a fairytale brothel from  _Arabian Nights_."

It wasn't often you saw Mephisto this vexed. One could manage it by badmouthing German, sometimes, but this time around his agitation seemed to concern that god-awful-

"It's a  _cathedral_ ", he pointed out with a grumble, and occupied himself with a stack of notes left by the Academy prefects. "It's of much greater dignity than a common church. And Ivan actually  _liked_ it: it was the  _architect_  that blinded himself when he realised his designs had been-" Mephisto didn't deign to continue.

And in Shiro's mind… a creeping suspicion that tugged the corners of his mouth. No, could he really…?

"His designs had been…?" he led on, finding an incredulous smile on his lips.

"What's it to you?" the demon sulked over his paperwork. "You don't like the cathedral anyway."

"I might change my mind. Maybe…" He pinched the tip of his tongue between his teeth to keep from laughing until he knew for sure. "…the building doesn't do the design justice? If the tsar himself approved of it, it must have been… fabulous."

"A work of art."

"Undoubtedly. Would take a great mind to compose something so unique."

"Quite so."

"And to replace the architect's drawings with it."

"The man was a puppet of the patriarchs, and so unimaginative." He evened the edges of the stack against the desk with a dry look. " _His_  design certainly wouldn't have ended up on postcards."

"No", Shiro agreed, trembling with full-bodied laughter. "No, it wouldn't."

 


	7. Concerning mementos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What would have happened, in **Inferno ch 14** , if someone _had_ walked in on Shiro and Mephisto in the bath? **Weiryn** was the one asking.

_Starts off right when Mephisto has turned back into human form after being towel-harassed and tickled~_

* * *

Disaster.

When Shiro heard the door open he threw caution to the dogs and pushed Mephisto-

Nowhere. The demon pushed back up against him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"What the hell are you playing at?" Shiro hissed, opening his eyes to get a grip of the situation. Which didn't help much. For one, his eyes were -3.0 dioptres. That granted him a range of clear vision of 30 cm; which, either way, did let him see Mephisto's neck perfectly well.

The demon was busy talking politely with a blurry man in some foreign tongue, and Shiro wondered if, and how, he was explaining the situa-

*poof*

Mephisto was no longer sitting in his lap, but on a small wooden stool.

"Wash my back."

"What?" Leaning sideways to peek out from behind Mephisto's shoulder, he saw the blur of a man gingerly lower himself into the onsen – and a bucket of hot tap water floated over to them accompanied by a sponge and a bar of soap. "Why?"

"I told him you were about to wash my back."

"Obviously." The bucket helpfully nudged his leg. "Have him do it, I'm on my way o-"

"No, it has to be you."

If not for the very unfamiliar note of urgency in his voice, Shiro would have left. But curiosity is not a trait limited to demons.

"And why is that?"

"Why do you think?" he huffed.

The bucket nudged his leg again.

"I'm not doing anything until you-"

The bucket was on the _other_ side of him. Shiro's gaze shot down to his right to see what it was that-

"I need you for hiding my tail", Mephisto confessed reluctantly.

Shiro stared at the sleek, scaly thing that plastered itself against the floor, followed the curve of his leg, and hid behind his back.

"You have a goddamn tail…"

"Of course I do: I'm a demon!"

"Yeah, but… doesn't everyone here know that already? Why would you have to-" There was no difference in Mephisto's voice, no tension in his bony shoulders, no change in posture or twitching of his hair curl… And all the same, Shiro could tell he was off balance. "Why should I bother saving your ass when you've got yourself to blame for this situation?" he probed, eager to see Mephisto's reaction.

The reaction consisted of the demon shooting him a sly smile over his shoulder.

"I can get myself a bathrobe to hide my tail anytime I want: but I wonder why I would be sitting in your lap, if your intention wasn't to wash my back? Out of breath and my hair all tousled, no less~" Mephisto shot him the dirtiest wink history had ever seen. "Such a naughty student, seducing his headmaster; really, you ought to be grateful _I'm_ saving _you_."

…it takes a demon's silver tongue to make you swallow your pride in order to save it.

* * *

Washing someone's back was pretty normal – maybe that was the problem…? What was normal around Mephisto was not normal in the rest of the world, and trying to fit those two normals together was-

He had a tail.

Try as he may, Shiro could not drag his attention anywhere else. The fangs and the ears he'd gotten used to; humans had teeth and ears too, after all: his just looked a bit different. But a tail?

Shiro watched the lather of the soap dribble down his back and get caught in the pale lime green spines that poked out of the skin on his lower back. The tail would have looked like a purple snake if not for that ridge riding the length of it. Wonder what it felt like to have a tail? Shiro couldn't quite tell if the green spines were quills or if they were hair, or some weird in-between feature of demon anatomy. Wouldn't it be uncomfortable, to hide something that long in normal clo- Oh, that was the reason for the ugly trousers?

Shiro poured water over the bony shoulders and flushed the lather to the floor: when the hot water came in contact with the tail, Shiro felt something soft and furry brush hastily against his back. It had a tuft at the end? Wonder if that was purple too, or green? Maybe it had a curl…?

Barely had he begun to turn around to find out before the same furry tip smacked him hard across the cheek.

"Uncivilized monkey!"

"Who's uncivilized?" He rubbed his stinging cheek. "I was just-" Peeking on a demon's most private parts. Really, he should've learnt from the reactions of the umbrella-bat. "Oh. Sorry." Couldn't help but smile, though: shameless as Mephisto was, it was somehow also fitting his dapper manners to be a prude. That description didn't add up for shit, but then again nothing about Mephisto did. "Such a princess", he chuckled as he went back to washing.

"Manners and etiquette is the mark that distinguishes the gentleman from the rabble", he snorted. "Not that you would know."

"Nope. I'm just a monkey, scratching your back for scratching mine."

Interesting choice of words, since Mephisto seemed to have had his back scratched a few times before. Initially, Shiro had been surprised by how different European skin was to Asian. His hands were the warm, golden tint of birch wood: same as every Japanese who had seen a little sun. By contrast, Mephisto's back was deathly pale: not the kind of pasty white Japanese women dreamed of, but the sickly, translucent kind of pale that let you see every meandering blood vessel under his skin.

"I've never seen a guy look so much like a road map." It wasn't the quality of the skin that interested Shiro most, however. It was the scars that were rendered almost invisible by the pallor: thin, straight lines, crisscrossing all the way from his shoulders down to the middle of his narrow back. "I thought demons regenerated all damage?" he said curiously.

"We do." The tips of the pointy ears twitched as he caught on to what Shiro was referring to. "Those are from when this body belonged to Johann."

"To Johann? That doesn't look like something a scholar would sustain." Unless he'd suffered severe paper-cuts when caught under a toppled bookshelf: those marks looked more like something made by cla- "Oh."

Shiro's hands halted the scrubbing. Awkward. A bit like when he had chanced upon a naked Midori in the woods, but so much more awkward. The oldest preserved tales of the legend did say that Mephistopheles had seduced Faust…

Forget the tail: how freaky wasn't it to be wearing your dead friend's – dead _lover's_ – body? With mementos you had yourself clawed into its skin?

"If it's any consolation to you, he liked it~"

Shiro squeezed the soaked sponge over Mephisto's head, and earned himself a painful smack from the tail. Not that he cared.

"He was your friend, dammit", he snarled, and resumed the scrubbing with a thin line between his eyebrows. "And he died because of you."

"Death is always the price for life", said the demon sagely. "And for that price, I gave him a life worth living: nothing more, nothing less."

There is cold felt in the skin, and cold felt in the marrow of your bones. Watching Mephisto absentmindedly twirl the clipped tress of his bangs between his claws, Shiro felt the cold go to his very soul.


	8. Concerning past sins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relates to **Inferno ch 21**. I suppose I should rate this chapter M, for precaution. It's nothing graphic, just a tad disturbing if you think too much about it – made more disturbing by the fact that this sort of is canon. xD Kato made Loke and Samael the same guy, yes? Which means that tales of Loke also apply to Samael. And that opens up a whole new world of possibilities, since I love bringing myths into my writing. I try to make it so that even if you aren't familiar with Norse mythology, you will get the gist of it.
> 
> For **Zeitdieb** and **SkyHearts**. (...even if this probably wasn't what you had in mind with "miniature Pheleses".)

 

Curiosity killed the cat, they say: as if that's the worst that can happen. They don't know shit, whoever "they" are.

Shiro had been surprised to find that there was a collection of Norse myths and tales in Japanese in the Academy library – or, rather, surprised that he had been able to find it in the massive amount of books said library housed.

Loke was featured in near every one of them; usually as the instigator of various adventures and bets. A trickster and a gambler. Shiro had to admit, he would've recognised the old goat even if he didn't know it had actually been him.

…but the thing with myths and legends is, you never know what's true and what isn't. That's when curiosity kicks in. And that's when things start going bad for the cat – or, in this case, the lion.

* * *

"...you said the Norsemen called you Loke?"

"So they did", Mephisto confirmed, stretched out on the couch in his office with a manga volume hovering above at comfortable reading distance. Shiro was quite sure that couch normally wasn't long enough for the demon, but had come to accept that things usually became what Mephisto wanted them to be.

"That Loke?" he asked, holding up the library book.

"There only ever was one."

"And you can turn into a flea?"

"I can, if necessary." Though his face said he didn't like it much. "The dog shape is by far the most convenient for moving about human society, however."

"Hard to tie a bow around a flea's neck, Cuddlebun?" Shiro chuckled and leafed ahead in the book. "But all the stuff in this can't be true, can it? Like you being kidnapped by an eagle and then it turned out to be a disguised giant?"

"No no, that's the official story", he confirmed, idly turning a page in his manga. "Can't very well be seen in the company of other demons when I'm supposed to have sided with the Aesir, unless they think I've been kidnapped. The eagle was an old acquaintance of mine named Tjatse. He flew us over to Trym, a demon of some recognition in Assiah. We had a chat and a drink and a few other comradely pleasantries…" Mephisto laughed so that his whole body trembled. "And we had the most hilarious idea! Trym was throwing a feast in his lair and sought entertainment that his guests would remember till the end of their days, since he would have the King of Earth over." Mephisto wiped a tear from his eye, still chuckling in his throat. "Amaimon has the attention span of a goldfish, so keeping him entertained and interested requires something out of the ordinary indeed. I proposed we let Tor come to Trym's threshold, robed in full women's dress: that would make any demon of that time laugh until his lungs bled."

"Was Tor an exorcist, or something along those lines? He went on loads of troll-hunts and such." Shiro tapped the cover of the book with an inquiring look. "I'm assuming trolls and giants were their names for demons?"

"Quite correct", Mephisto confirmed, and continued the story: not the way it was told in the mythology, but no less entertaining. "Tor was a Norse Paladin, if one would shame the title by applying it to a heathen: a great warrior, feared and loathed among demons. His hammer Mjölner was like the Japanese koumakens, only… like Tor", he chuckled. "Blunt and crude, but perfectly lethal. And so fierce~" Shiro tried not to think of what the purring cadence implied about Tor's fierceness. "Trym loved the idea, but doubted that I could accomplish that." A cocky smirk tugged the demon's lips. "Ah, whatever is one to do with such faithlessness? I raised the bar and told him I would have Tor at his threshold in _wedding dress_." He glanced at the book in Shiro's hands as if it were a photo album full of dear memories. Dear to him and horrible to most others involved. "Ahh such were the days when I didn't wear the Vatican's uniform. I stole Mjölner for Trym, and told the Aesir that he wanted Freja's hand in exchange to give it back; Freja refused, of course. Lovely girl, that: refused marriage whenever it was offered, but never turned down the favours of marriage when that was offered. Oh, and convincing Tor to dress up as her in wedding gown – goodness me, that took near every ounce of skill I possess, but it was worth it tenfold!"

"But… Didn't Tor kill every single demon at the feast when he got his hammer back?"

"That he did." From the looks of it Mephisto seemed to think that part of the story was even funnier than the cross-dressing.

"But… Trym?" Shiro didn't quite follow. Help the demon, then kill him…? "And the guests, and-?"

"Nothing better than bloodshed to put a smile on my little brother's face", Mephisto snickered. "Tor and Amaimon fought to their hearts' delight, and Trym got exactly what he asked for: a feast his guests remembered to the end of their days."

…different places, different names; same demon. Which reminded Shiro:

"What about Buroku?" he inquired with a cheeky smirk, and took a seat in anticipation of the next unofficial story. "You could hardly have bet your head against him and lost, since your head's still there: or did it use to be even bigger~?"

"My head is by no measures big, and the story with Brokk was a misunderstanding", said Mephisto delicately. He kept a perfectly straight face, and if not for the discreet twitch of his curl Shiro would've missed that he was piqued. "And I couldn't relate what actually did happen, since he had stitched my mouth shut." So that part was true, then. "It's  _difficult_ to remove when your flesh keeps regenerating around the string", he clarified in surly tones; to no avail, since Shiro was busting a lung laughing.

"Hah - maybe I should try that?" He made sure to grin extra wide to compensate for Mephisto's sour look and drooping ears. "Come on, you gotta admit: even if it isn't true, it's a damn good story! Knowing you, the Aesir had plenty of quirks to invent stories around. Oh, like that one…! Hahahahaha that one, the one about the giant who bet he could build your fortifications in three winters! When you had to lure his work horse away so he couldn't finish on time!"

The sour look became-

"Indeed: I'm never doing that again."

There is the expression "choke on laughter", and there is actual choking on laughter: the latter is what happens when your friend suddenly tells you-

"You really got knocked up by a-?" Shiro closed his eyes. It didn't help one bit. Not when he thought of what Loke had done to keep the work horse occupied. "That… has got to be the most disturbing thing I've heard in my life."

"Believe me, not as disturbing as giving birth to an eight-legged horse."

"Oh I believe you", Shiro groaned into his hands, trying to somehow prevent more pictures from reaching his mind. "For the first and only time, I believe you completely. Why the _hell_ would you-? With a goddamn  _horse_?!"

"Horses are very big animals; a  _giant's_ horse is even bigger, and they really have big-"

"I-get-it!" he cut off in an attempt to save his mind from that explanation. "I get it, I get it!" He would never be able to look at Mephisto again: hell, he might never be able to look at a horse again. "You… are such a slut", he groaned.

"I'm a shape shifter", Mephisto corrected with far too much amusement bouncing in his voice. "Broadens the selection remarkably."

"No, no…" Shiro sank until his head was almost level with his knees, and gave off an unarticulated noise reminiscent of an old door that wants nothing more than to drop off its hinges and become firewood. "You're not telling me the gigantic snake and the wolf were also…?"

"They weren't gigantic when they were born: Fenris wasn't much larger than I am in dog form."

"Oh god, you're disgusting." Shiro's skin was crawling off his body; he could feel it. That, and an urge to somehow have a black censoring strip cover Mephisto wherever he went.

"I was only mother to Sleipner", he pointed out reproachfully. "And Hel looked surprisingly human, despite-"

"As if that makes it  _any_ better in  _any_  way! Chris'sake, you fuck  _animals_ …!" He wouldn't be able to look at snakes or wolves either. Or dogs. Mephisto – oh, what a  _cuddlebun_  he was…

"Maybe I wouldn't, if I had a human handy who wouldn't whisper to the Vatican~?" he suggested shrewdly. "Blunt and crude and firece, not too unlike Tor: I wonder if you're as commanding in bed as he- Eh?"

Mephisto stopped abruptly at the knifepoint aimed at his nose.

"Knife." The sharp tip moved down from nose to lips. "String." Shiro held the spindle of spider string from Hyakki Yagyou in his other hand. "Good enough for Buroku; good enough for me. Say 'aaaah'."

 


	9. Concerning anniversaries

…Mephisto's worst habit, although it was stiff competition, was hovering mere centimetres from Shiro's face while the latter slept.

"Jesus Christ, stop doing that!" he croaked, and proceeded with peeling himself off the wall he'd pressed up against when he woke up. "What's it about this time? And what is _that_?"

Even _with_ glasses, the lump sitting on the plate in Mephisto's hands would have been impossible to identify.

"A cake, obviously."

Obviously. Shiro had no idea what you had to do to a cake to make it look like that, and pitied whoever had to eat it.

"For whom?" he asked warily. "It's July, I don't know anybody with a birthday in July."

"It's for Dimwit, you imbecile", Mephisto snorted. "Today is the anniversary for when ze first published us."

Shiro rubbed his sleepy eyes with a deep, heartfelt groan. He'd completely forgotten. He tended to forget they had an author most of the time. He also tended to wish they _hadn't_ had one, since ze was particularly imaginative when it came to putting him through trouble.

"Have you ever stopped to think that poisoning our author equals suicide for both of us?" he said flatly.

"Beg your pardon", he said in surly tones, "but I am not _poisoning_ anyone: it's a purely symbolic gesture, since Dimwit has no taste in sweet things at all. I'm merely expressing my gratitude and appreciation for the work ze does."

Yes, gratitude shaped and coloured – and probably tasting – like a molehill. It was early in the morning, but there was something fundamentally wrong in that reasoning that didn't pass Shiro by unnoticed.

"Why not give her something she'd actually like instead?"

Really, Mephisto ought to have been intelligent enough to think of that.

"I never thought you'd ask~"

The cake must somehow have been connected to Mephisto's clothes, for both of them disappeared simultaneously when he snapped his fingers.

"No no no no no what are you doing?!" Shiro pressed up against the wall again, this time with a naked demon crawling up to him on all fours with a very, _very_ disturbing look on his face.

"I do think Dimwit would like this – don't you~?" he purred while Shiro tried to keep him at respectable distance by pushing against his shoulders.

Oh yes: Mephisto was intelligent enough to think of something like that.

"I've had enough of this already! You two _always_ go behind my back! Don't I have equal rights in this fic?!"

…No. Shiro had realised long ago that Dimwit was a degenerate that sided with demons whenever opportunity presented itself, as was to be expected of what he had come to term "the perverted internet wraiths". Shiro had nothing against women, nothing at all; real women, that was. Perverted internet wraiths that repeatedly suggested he should jump into bed with his principal were demons in the guise of women, that much he was sure of.

For emergency situations like this, he had devised a solution he'd picked up from a man he held deep respect for, a man he really would've liked to meet if his author hadn't been such a lame purist: Dean Winchester.

Shiro grabbed the piece of chalk he kept next to his switchblade under the pillow, threw himself out of bed, and drew the closing line into the circle on the floorboards. A devil's trap.

"Wha-? Crossovers is cheating, Shiro!" Mephisto sputtered indignantly behind the invisible barrier.

"Pff, look who's talking – I've seen you take drawing lessons from Kuchiki Rukia during lunch break, you know." Shiro tossed the chalk leisurely up and down in his hand, smiling as he pondered what to do next. The tables had turned in a most interesting way... "I seem to recall Dimwit likes tails…" His eyes wandered to the one part of himself that Mephisto bothered to keep hidden in the tousled sheets. No bad physique for someone so old, had to admit that.

"No, no, and _no_ , Shiro", the demon declared and crossed his spindly arms. It looked so childish and so wrong it was almost cute.

"Oh come on – who was it that wanted to give Dimwit something she likes, hm?" he jeered. "Be a good dog and wag your tail for your master~"

"I would be more than happy to play this kind of game with you if I weren't stuck in a devil's trap", he retorted acidly, with a hair curl that vibrated like a tuning fork.

"Well, try looking at it this way: play along and I might release you?" Yes, he enjoyed this more than was morally defendable – so? Had to make the most of it when Dimwit for once decided to take his side.

"I find that the presence of 'might' somewhat deters my enthusiasm."

"Really? I find it kinda spurs _my_ enthusiasm", he returned with a pleasant- No, nah, not really: a criminally amused grin.

Mephisto's face was a fine shade of mixed pink and purple that looked a little like the bruise that was currently forming on his pride. With tightly clenched jaws  
and fingers clutching the sheet in death-grips, he slowly reared the tail up. It was longer than Shiro had expected, covered in scales of the same purple as his hair and ending in a-

Shiro covered his face with his hand in a feeble attempt to smother the unhinged giggles that bubbled up in his throat.

"Snnrrkukukuku you've got a bow…!" And what a dainty little thing it was, pretty pink and purple stripes to match the feathery tuft that had bristled into a toilet brush of rage…!

"You are earning up some very unpleasant karma points, young man."

"Pfffufuhuhuhu good luck trying to sound menacing when you've got a tail pimped out like a My Little Pony's!"

"Just you wait till I get out of- OW!" The air crackled viciously as the finger Mephisto pointed at him got a little too close to the barrier.

"Aww – broke a nail, princess…?"

There would be hell to pay, but Shiro couldn't care less right now. He would die smiling with this day in min-

" _Why is it that Dimwit just_ loves _opening doors at the most inconvenient times…?_ "

The doorframe filled with a cloud of balloons, serpentines and confetti, and the faces of his friends, which looked rather…

"Okay, Shiro." Shizuku looked, and sounded, like he was trying his best to imagine the scene before him didn't exist. "No explanation, just a yes or no: are ye usin' my sister as ye' gay beard?"

"No, I really do date your sister." He massaged the scowl lines between his eyebrows, but suspected that they would soon settle permanently anyway. "Mephisto is here because-"

"Because Shiro seems so fond of having me in bed that he drew a devil's trap that prevents me from leaving it – unless I'm a good dog and put on a private peep show for him~" He did put on a most indecent show, the way he was kneeling with his legs apart and hands planted on the mattress between them. Shiro appreciated that pose when performed by women, but Mephisto's lecherous bedroom-look made every hair on his body curl inwards.

" _Where the hell did that dog-collar come from…?_ " No: priorities, priorities. Save the situation first. "Okay, don't trust a demon's deceptive words, that's the first rule. Today's the anniversary of _The Beginning of the_ _En_ -"

"It's _The End of the Beginning_ , Shiro-kun", Sen corrected helpfully.

"Yeah, whatever: the anniversary is today, and his idea of a good present for Dimwit was… was guy-on-guy love. I had to confine him somehow."

…Apparently, none of the others was aware that Dimwit had such interests, and looked rather disturbed about it - except two of them, who were unlikely to be disturbed by anything short of necrophilia.

"We came for anniversary also", Midori informed, proudly presenting him the somewhat crippled balloon dog she'd made. "Hold this."

Not knowing what else to do, Shiro accepted the balloon dog and let Midori trot into his room.

"My apologies, Sir Pheles", she said, bowing gracefully to the naked prisoner before turning on her heel, and collecting the cover from Saburota's meticulously made bed. "Better like this, maybe?"

"Yes, much better. Thanks, Midori-chan."

"It's not better! I can't see a thing!"

Once Shiro's bed had been equipped with drapes hung from the bunk above, the rest of the cram school class filed in through the door. Sen had brought board games and a real cake, Shizuku had made flags to hang around the room, Ryuuji had brought sparklers and lemonade, and Midori had brought her newfound love for balloon animals (which soon populated both window sills and the greater part of Saburota's bed). Shiro donned some clothes, lit a cigarette, and overall they had a great time of celebrating, except-

"Shiiiiiroooooo~ Let me oooouuut~ It's _boring_ in here…!"

Except the incessant whining from behind the improvised drapes.

…But you can't have everything, can you? Ryuuji's flute drowned it out a bit, when he picked that up; and the laughter when they got into the board games was distracting enough. Tanuki are said to bring good fortune and money, among other things, and while Ryuuji had shown no such tendency in real life he proved absolutely impossible to beat at Monopoly. Shizuku sat carving between his turns, and at the end of the game placed a second donkey next to the Shiro-donkey on the bed-table.

When the sun glared at them through the window with its red eye, and they were all well fed on cake, lemonade and laughter, they wished each other a good night, and dropped off each to his or her respective bedroom. By the time Shiro was left alone to sleep, amongst half-mast flags and lingering sparkler-smoke, the whining behind the drapes had long since gone quiet.

"It was a great anniversary, really", he said in conversational tone, and buttoned open his shirt. It wasn't until now he noticed that Shizuku had fastened a miniature bow around the new donkey's neck, and attached a curl made of wire on top of its head. Really couldn't drop the subject, that guy... "Sen put sparklers between her fingers and danced with them; like fan dancing, but more awesome."

The drapes glowered quietly at him.

"I didn't know she could dance at all", he continued effortlessly, having left the shirt on the desk chair and proceeding to unbuckle his belt. "And Midori became really good at balloon animals after a while – you should see her giraffe."

The drapes sucked in surrounding sounds to become, if possible, even more quiet.

"And I figured out what we're gonna give Dimwit." Shiro dropped his trousers and socks on the chair and squatted down by the drapes, leaning close as if to whisper a secret. "You know what she likes the most…?" he smiled.

Receiving no reply, Shiro gingerly lifted the hem of the drapes and stepped into the devil's trap.

"Teasing", he finished, and let the curtain drop them some privacy for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On FF.net this was originally posted 5/7 2013, as that was the first year anniversary of TEotB. This is just for fun, boots high and low to my most (over)used elements in The End of the Beginning. x) Mmmh at long last I've decided that I prefer a gender neutral pronoun. Even if Mephisto is the only one tactful enough to use it. )8 Your author would treat you better if you treated zir better, Shiro.
> 
> Thank you all for reading! x)


	10. Concerning fashion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A while ago I had a chat with a friend of mine who's studying for textile engineer.** She knows craploads about fashion and fashion history, and I took the opportunity of asking a bit about Mephisto's peculiar wardrobe. It dates approximately from the mid-1500s, and the other thing my friend revealed put pictures in my head that I simply couldn't get rid of.
> 
> This is canon for TEotB, and chronologically set **in between Inferno ch 43 and ch 44**. Why I'm not putting it in the main fic? Uh... It's going to be long enough already without little behind-the-scenes detours like this one. x')

Habits, as all knowledgeable people should be aware, are dangerous things. Routine hides in the flesh like a parasite, and dulls the sharpest mind with habitual behaviour to prevent scrutiny and uprooting. Anything can become a habit: the danger lies in not being aware of habits, and thus not being aware of where they might lead. Most are harmless; some are beneficial, some are detrimental, some lead to new discoveries…

* * *

Sleepovers in Faust Mansion were becoming habit, and for good reason: the comfiest bed in the country, the greatest selection of films any private person owned, and a nine course breakfast buffet awaiting in the morning. The only drawback was Mephisto, really.

"Assssss-haaaaaaat…!" Shiro hissed as he slowly fumbled his way around the bedroom for the third time. He was used to having his lighter confiscated when he visited, but to wake up in the morning and not be able to find his glasses was a different matter. "Why do you have so bloody many toys, you twit?" It was nothing short of a miracle that he hadn't knocked anything down yet. He'd looked everywhere, even inside the display cases that held the principal's most valuable pie- "Ouch!"

The button-eyed plushies looked innocently at him from atop the drawers he'd banged his foot against. …and only then did it strike Shiro as odd that Mephisto had drawers, when he had a walk-in wardrobe twice as large as the dorm room Shiro lived in.

" _Scarves._ " Heh, so that was where his lighter landed? Good to know for future sleepovers. Shiro pulled out the next drawer: " _Socks._ " No, not really. " _Oh Mephisto, you're unbelievable…_ " Shiro lifted up one of the striped stockings between his forefinger and thumb, and still couldn't quite grasp that it  _was_ silk stockings. " _My god…_ " With something in between an embarrassed laugh and a snort he put the stocking back and proceeded to the third drawer.

…and after the initial shock, he laughed. Hell yeah. If the old goat spirited away his glasses it was only fair that Shiro should get to enjoy the search for them.

"Of course you're the kind to keep trophies, you horndog." One, two, three – no, he couldn't count how many there were. "Seems you like ladies with slim waists", Shiro snickered to himself as he admired an especially delicate lace garter belt that had a pleasant smell of lavender about it. "The Vatican's obedient guardian dog indeed."

"Obedient in all that matters", Mephisto's rich voice replied from the bedroom door. "Pray tell; why are you going through my drawers…?"

"Pray tell; where did you hide my glasses?" He pushed the drawer shut and faced the talking blob. "I'm a wee bit handicapped without them."

*poof*

"You left them by the bathroom mirror", said the in-focus Mephisto in the doorway. "Yare yare, humans blame demons for all kinds of things."

"And more often than not, we're right in doing that." Shiro adjusted his glasses and nodded his head at the drawers with a smirk. "A habit of keeping mementos, huh? Quite the collection of good memories there. She must've looked smoking hot in that lacy pink one."

An unusually blank look crossed the demon's features. For a moment it seemed like he was at a complete loss for what Shiro was talking about, until that look bloomed into the most lecherous smirk Shiro had seen in his life.

"Well well: I know what I'll be wearing next time you sleep here, then~"

And gradually… Shiro's face came to match the pink garter belt.

"No… Shit, no…" But the pictures kept flooding his mind, one worse than the other, and made his face crinkle up in pain. "Oh  _god_ …" He covered his eyes, but kept seeing Mephisto in… in… "I can never look at you again, you pervert!" he groaned from the floor where he had collapsed, rolling back and forth as if plagued by invisible insects that he desperately wanted to crush. "Why the hell are you wearing women's undergarments?!"

"Women's?" Mephisto snorted and crossed his arms. "I'll have you know that garter belt and stockings were the finest haute couture a man could own in the 1550's."

"This is the twentieth century, you ass!"

"True fashion is ageless: garter belt and stockings are still in high demand", he said in blithely lilting tones.

"For  _women!_ "

"Indeed: history is often gravely misunderstood by future generations."

"It's  _you_ who're misunderstanding contemporary society", he groaned into his hand. Rolling around didn't help, only made him motion sick on top of the general… discomfort.

"Are you sure~?" The demon grinned all the way out to his pointy ears. "I hear contemporary society thinks I'm smoking hot in lady lingerie."

* * *

Habits are dangerous things. Most are harmless; some are beneficial, some are detrimental, some lead to new discoveries… and some lead to discoveries you'd rather not make.

 


	11. Concerning entirely different things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Reader request from ManiacalMuffins:** "what if Shiro was the demon and Mephisto the human?" (Readers over at FF.net seem to have dubbed it "The Sorrows of Young Hohenzollern" and who am I to deny that the title is a great fit?)
> 
> This turned out vastly different from what I'd expected, as some snippets do, but I think that is because it wants to be a story in itself, not a one-shot. So think of this as a few snapshots from a much longer fic that only exists in my head, or a quick recap of said non-existing fic.

*clank*

The off-key note leapt gleefully from the ivory keys and sent a cringe through him as it landed on his sensitive ears – yet, he kept playing. Beethoven's tenth symphony was a work of art, and he hadn't spent hour upon hour rehearsing it to-

*ca-lank*

A selection of vocabulary highly inappropriate for a man – well, youth – of his standing came to mind, but he clenched his teeth around it and maintained a face as flawlessly polished as the lacquered wood of his grand pian-

*clank*

" _Insufferable demon_ ", he growled inwardly, noticing how the creature lounging on the piano lid began to idly leaf ahead in the music sheets in front of him. Well, let him. The music poured from his heart, unaided by black-inked crutches for the eyes. He was prepared for this. He was going to play the tenth to the end, and the final notes would pull the guests off their chairs in awe, and they would applaud him, and admire him, and-

*clonk*

He gritted his teeth and ignored the un-timed taps that shredded his dreams into kindle wood for the fire in his tight chest. No, he would do this. He had been given the honour of performing before the banquet, in front of the German Empire's most influential elite; he, the most talented Hohenzollern in his generation, the one who would one day title himself Kaiser over Europe's most powerful nation, the one who-

*clonk*

"Would you  _for once_  stop it, Shiro?" he hissed through his teeth, feeling his composure thin as the weft of his dreams came undone under the scrutiny of the guests around the banquet hall's tables.

He, the one whom Fate had singled out to be tormented by an excruciatingly galling demon.

"Don't wanna mess up in front of the guests, heeh~?" The unkempt tuft of white hair tipped sideways with the childish motion of the creature's head. "Don't wanna disappoint dear daddy?"

_Nihil Sine Deo_. His family's motto:  _Nothing Without God_  – oh, the irony… Mephisto had to toil through every day without any aid from God, whose existence he had severely come to doubt: if there truly were a God in the heavens, He would strike down a chandelier and crush the… the  _thing_ that smirked gleefully at him from atop the piano.

"I don't need to answer inane inquiries", he retorted under his breath and swatted at a finger that came sinking towards the wrong keys – with any luck, the guests would be assuming he was bothered by insects. "You know full well this is an occasion of highest import, with all the significant politicians and aristocrats attending: so would you  _for heaven's sake_ leave me be just this on-"

With a grin and a flick of his finger, Shiro buried Mephisto's nimble hands under scattered music sheets. Still, he kept playing: to meet the expectations that saturated the air, and to defy that  _conceited_  little pest…! This was his moment to shine, this was when he would dazzle them all with his talent and charisma and wipe the smudges off his reputation once and for a-!

"Tsk tsk, how can a Crown Prince be such a klutz?" the demon chided merrily, dusting the fuzzy tip of his tail over the piano lid; far too much like a cat toying with a mouse. "Who'd dare place an empire in hands like yours?" The tail crept slowly towards the edge of the instrument, teasing Mephisto with the knowledge that it could move as leisurely as it liked; if he were to make a grab for it, he would miss notes. "Why, one wouldn't even notice any difference if they were broken."

…ah, the virtues of a noble up-bringing. The moment Shiro's tail flipped the heavy wooden lid down over the keys, Mephisto's impulse to pull away from danger clashed with an instinct to behave and excel that had long since become second nature: and the young Crown Prince did something he very rarely had to do.

He bowed.

Head pressed hard onto the concave curve of the wood, he kept the lid open while his hands still played Beethoven mere inches from his flushed face.

Mephisto knew he was the Court jester, and there was nothing,  _nothing in the world_  that he detested more. The Reichstag thought his nerves were too weak to hold before crowds; the servants quietly wondered if his wet-nurse had dropped him headfirst when he was little; his father…

" _Father thinks I'm unfit to be the head of state_ ", he reminded himself, feeding oil to the flame of silent rage in his chest.

He had stopped trying to tell his family about Shiro long ago. Little children could tell fairy tales of imaginary creatures that knocked down glass and tripped him when he practiced fencing; young adults who spoke such nonsense were locked up for their own safety – and the safety of the family name. Thus, Prince Mephisto wasn't brilliant. He wasn't talented, and he wasn't elegant. His skill and wit never showed but in the privacy of his shadow, and to the rest of the world he was merely a klutz, a hopeless fool, a bumbling subject of ridicule behind his back and  _all for the sake of that accursed demon_ _!_

"Hooo~ That's rare", the vile creature cooed happily on the piano. "Can't let such a humble display go unrewarded, when you so rarely bow that big head of yours, now can I?"

Behind the curtains of his black hair, Mephisto's face twisted into a grimace of humiliation, fear and fury. Reward? Reward for this  _disgraceful_  circus he was forced to enact, in front of the very people whose expectations hung like a yoke over his shoulders, the people that should hold him in awe and respe-

Quick, light feet scampered down his neck and into his ruffled collar.

"There ya go~! A persistent little friend: just like the prince who keeps crawling no matter how much he's stepped on."

For the rest of that evening, Mephisto locked himself away in his bedchamber. He covered himself in layers of bitterness and self-pity to shut out the murmur of voices that chuckled at their Crown Prince, who couldn't play the piano very well, and who screamed like a little girl over a cockroach.

* * *

Mephisto had seen demons as long as he could remember. They ranged from frightening to laughable, and he had learnt that neither laughing at them nor shying away from them was a recommendable way of dealing with the matter. Laughing drew their anger, and shying away their interest – whichever was worse was up for discussion, but he knew from experience that neither was pleasant. What undoubtedly worked best was to ignore them: play ignorant, as the rest of mankind seemed to be. Ignore the occasional theft of cutlery, and the claws that sometimes pulled his trouser leg to trip him. It wasn't always easy, but it had worked splendidly – until he met Shiro.

"Pardon my language", Mephisto muttered over his geography homework, "but won't you kindly go to hell?"

"Won't you kindly take off the well-bred straight-coat and act a little less like a bitter old man, eh? You're sixteen, Mephi. You should be out chasing girls an' breaking bones when doing stupid-ass tricks on horseback to impress them!" And to rub the message in, so to speak, Shiro ground the toe of his boot into Mephisto's head. The demon had perched himself atop a high wardrobe. For what reason Mephisto didn't know, although a voice in the back of his mind was quite sure Shiro simply liked to look down on people.

"I'm confident you would find some way of spoiling that for me, too, wouldn't you?" he said curtly, leaning away as he dipped his quill in the inkwell with a graceful motion.

There was no possibility, not even a remote one, of ignoring Shiro. The demon simply wouldn't have it. Every room he entered was his, every patch of ground he stepped on he owned, and Mephisto vividly recalled the day – how he wished it had never come to pass – when Shiro had walked into his chamber, seated his tailed behind on an embroidered chair, and rolled himself a cigarette using Mephisto's French homework.

"Pff, you'll make a proper Kaiser – paranoid already. Essential for surviving in the political world." The demon hopped down from the wardrobe, hands in the pockets of the utterly unfashionable black coat he wore. "Is that what you want? A game of strategy an' suspicion? Gonna spend your life moving those ambitions up to heaven high, notch by notch, and leaving all freedom behind?" A pair of folded arms in tattered sleeves descended on Mephisto's head, and with a second weight a stubble-strewn chin laid itself on top of them. "Kaiser isn't a life, boy. It's a job. A twenty-four hour, seven-days-a-week parasite job where the title eats up all that's you under it – an' when it's finally time to hand down the title to the next poor idiot, there's nothing of you left. If you're gonna have a life, little prince of mine, you're gonna have to live it before you're crowned."

"I am  _not_ any little prince of yours!" Mephisto successfully stabbed the feather of the quill upwards, and got Shiro off his head with a sputtering noise. "And don't spit on the floor!"

"Then don't stick a feather in my mouth."

The demon had already spat on the floor. Glorious.

"That is so… unsanitary", he grimaced, whereupon he reached for a wooden panel on the wall and pulled the cord that would bring him a footman.

"You're calling a servant for that?" Shiro's snow-white eyebrows rose over eyes tinted the same hue of red as the wines he liked to spill on white lace tablecloths. "The poor thing will think you're even more of a spoiled brat, ya know: first spitting on the floor, then calling someone to clean it up for you."

"I am not. Cleaning up. Your spit", the young prince retorted in frigid tones.

The demon just grinned: a wide, annoying grin that spelt  _mischief_ in white fangs.

"You'd never do that, my proud little peacock. Wasn't what I suggested, either. I'm just saying that if you're calling for someone to clean up, at least give them something worth the effort."

The painting above the mantelpiece – a rather quaint thing depicting a hunting scene, with a heavy, gilded frame in French style – came crashing down as the nails that held it fell out.

Mephisto flew out of his chair – heavens, that painting had belonged to his great-grandfather, it was made by a distinguished Dutch painter…!

He caught the frame before it hit the stone mantelpiece, but not before it had knocked down – oh god, that was a clockwork automata from the late sixteenth century…!

A million glistening clockwork pieces of Mephisto's composure clattered over the marble floor.

"You idiot! You complete and utter- utter  _ass_! Do you know how much that was worth?! Ape! Why do you  _always_ have to-  _no!_ " But the kerosene lamp tipped off its stand before he could reach it, and his sole consolation was that it hadn't been lit.

For the next minute, Mephisto had no idea what he was doing. He woke from his tantrum only when the inkwell he'd hurled at Shiro instead hit the servant that just opened the door. The demon stood beside, stifling laughter into his hand… and the servant couldn't see him. All he could see was broken porcelain in a pool of kerosene, priceless clockwork mechanics spilled over toppled candelabras and torn canvas – and a young prince quivering with rage in the midst of it all.

As usual.

Mephisto pushed past the ink-stained servant without a word, stalking down the hallways. He hated crying. Hated, hated,  _hated_ it…! Hated that everyone took him for a hysteric ninny, hated them for not seeing Shiro, hated Shiro for taunting him and baiting him…!

Hated himself for falling for it.

* * *

…the kid was kinda cute. The way he got all flustered over the smallest things, like finding that his shoes had been hidden on the morning before an important meeting. He had tons of shoes, could've picked any pair – nobody would see them through the meeting table anyway. But no, he had to have  _those_ shoes: they matched his cravat. Or something like that.

Shiro was notorious for not following orders. Actually, it was one of few things he was really good at. When higher-ups had passed him the command "make sure the Hohenzollern Crown Prince doesn't become Kaiser" he had considered passing them a "go screw yourselves" in return, but thought better of it. He wasn't exactly unexpendable to Gehenna, and in case he didn't like his current job there were always other spots to fill: on the floor, for example. Once they'd flayed enough of his skin to make a carpet. So Shiro stayed in Assiah and did his job, albeit in the laziest manner possible.

At the moment, he was watching the young heir practice fencing in the sunlit yard. The gangly little shrimp was quick, and did well in fencing – when his boots weren't foddered with blackberry thorns.

Shiro had, to his well-concealed astonishment, heard the prince decline a change of boots when the instructor noticed his predicament: when fencing one should wear fencing boots, nothing else. It wasn't a matter of comfort, but of  _etiquette_.

…he'd nearly fallen off the tree branch when he heard it. Etiquette! Oh, the precious little thing, just as much a geared automaton as that old clock he'd broken!

Shiro didn't complain. Once he had observed Mephisto up close, an entirely new enthusiasm for his task had flared up within him. His little prince was exceedingly stubborn, and ambitious, and fussy – and pompous. In short, he was wonderful: and Shiro could pull his strings as easily as Mephisto pulled the cords to call for services from the castle staff.

…he didn't have any clear plan on how he'd prevent Mephisto from ascending the throne. Come now, that was years ahead. The current Kaiser was alive and kicking, the little shrimp hadn't even seen a pair of naked tits yet, and as a last resort he could always off him before the coronation ceremony; it wouldn't matter, as long as he got the job done eventually. If he rushed it and snuffed the prince now, he might be given some dreary work in bloody Siberia, or a task of similar attractiveness. So prince Mephisto lived.

* * *

Life is a transient phase in human existence, however.

Though he didn't say it, Shiro was sure some part of Mephisto's miserable condition owed to the fact that tuberculosis was a disease for the working class. It wasn't something a prince caught.

…the question was, of course, whether it was something a prince survived. Mephisto was virtually two-dimensional; not the kind of build that could endure any prolonged illness.

It would take care of his job for him. It would ensure the Hohenzollern prince was never crowned Kaiser of the German Empire. It would relieve him of his duty and set him free to roam Assiah as he pleased once more, until the bigwigs found some new thing to bother him with. But Shiro wasn't sure he wanted that. It came as a surprise, much like the disease had - but when he stood by the foot of the large bed that night, and the gaunt face on the down pillows seemed to fade away before his eyes, he knew that he wasn't ready to take on a new job just yet.

"Hey, kiddo." No response. Shiro seated himself on the bed and gently shook the scrawny shoulder. No reaction. If it hadn't been for the pained, wheezing breath coming through the parched lips, he would've thought the kid was dead. "Wake up, Mephi." No sign of life beneath the glistening film of sweat. "Come on, Mephi: I know you hate that name. Wake up, I need to talk to ya." Shit, the kid's skin was burning. " _He might die._ "

Before Shiro even knew what he was doing, he had peeled the damp sheets off and lifted the thin body out of the bed.

" _It's large enough to hold five Mephis lined up side by side, you scrawny little shrimp_ ", he muttered silently and magically opened the latch to the window. There was a feeble coughing rattling through the body in his arms, and the smell of warm blood seeped into his nostrils. " _Don't you dare die on me. I'd look even more like an idiot than I already do._ "

Shiro landed softly on the gravel surrounding the castle. It was a night shrouded in dark clouds that promised rain before morning – good. The fewer who saw what he was doing, the better.

Shiro strode across the yard in long steps, past gaudy statues and flower urns tall as a man. What  _was_  he doing, for that matter? Humans lived and died, had done so for millennia before he'd been born and would continue to do so for millennia after he'd turned into shapeless ether. Prince Mephisto was human, following the same rules as all humans did: what would it matter if he died after seventeen years or seventy?

" _I'm not through with you yet, shrimp_ ", he thought as he eyed the life-sized horse statue that reared up on its hind legs before them. It was the centerpiece of the fountain that was his goal.

That mattered. Humans lived and died, and when Mephisto was dead there would be no more flustered outbursts over misplaced shoes. There would be no more warning glares when he tipped wine glasses at the banquet table. There would be no more Mephisto. And if Shiro could have a say, he'd rather have seventy years of flustered outbursts than seventeen.

" _…well, here we go._ "

Shiro stepped over the stone lining and seated them both in the knee-deep fountain pool. He drew a hissing breath at the temperature and noted a weak gasp from Mephisto as well. Carefully, he scooped up water to wash the face and head that was still above water. The prince whimpered and shuddered in his arms, body quickly cooling down from burning to bearable. Unconsciousness didn't release its grip, and yet he pressed against Shiro's body heat, clutching weakly at his coat for comfort.

So feeble, humans. So frail and pathetic it was unbelievable they could have become so many: there in the German Empire, they were increasing by  _millions_.

"You're real stubborn, aren't ya…?" he murmured to the frail, pathetic human in his arms. "Hell-bent on proving your worth, no matter how many times I throw spanners in the works for you." He rested his eyes on the pale face, the long eyelashes, the chin that had gained just enough stubble that it could be called a beard; and pulled a small, crooked smirk. "You'd probably make a good Kaiser. Can't let that happen, unfortunately. Boss' orders." He pushed away a few hairs that clung to the damp cheekbone. "Hey, Mephi? Think you can wake up now?"

The light shake triggered another coughing fit, and tiny specks of blood dotted his lips. He wouldn't last another week like this.

"Come on, you sissy: I'm trying to save your life here." He washed off the blood gingerly. "The least you can do is cooperate."

Mephisto's green eyes opened, but that was all: painted glass windows in a vacant castle. It took a long while before his pupils really found Shiro, and even longer before his fever-heated brain recognised him.

"What are you doing…?" he whispered through rusty vocal cords.

"What I said: saving your life. Yeah, I can do that; but not for free." Shiro tapped a long, pearl white claw on Mephisto's nose. "You're gonna promise me something as payment. You will pass your claim on the throne to your brother, Amaimon."

Defiance, cold and sharp as steel, flashed over the haggard face.

"Never."

"Much good your birthright's gonna do you when you're dead", Shiro observed casually. "'Cause you will die, I can assure you. One way or the other, if you strive to become Kaiser you will die. That's what I was sent to do." Bingo, that got the shrimp's attention. "It's high up on my bosses' wish list, apparently. 'Use any means to ensure the Hohenzollern Crown Prince never claims the crown'. Now, if you swear to me you won't, that would make my job much easier, and you could… I don't know: write poetry or whatever bored aristocrat boys do."

Mephisto was smart – had to hand the kid that. Even with a fever, one could see the cogs turning smoothly in his head and making sense of all the years of humiliation that had carefully eroded his standing in the royal family. All the years he'd fought for his dreams; the automaton dreams of one born and raised for a single purpose that was about to be taken from him forever.

"I promise", he wheezed, clutching the soaked fabric of the coat tighter in his hand – and in his eyes, the flame of dying dreams was replaced by the fervent desire to live. The desire that made those feeble humans so incredibly stubborn. "I won't become Kaiser. I won't claim the throne. I just… please... I want to live."

" _…he knew._ " The thought hit Shiro like a sledgehammer in the chest. Mephisto had known he was dying; had accepted it, succumbed to it, slipped into unconsciousness and very nearly died, with dignity… And now that the starless night promised the hope of life, dignity flushed away down the spoiled prince's cheeks and lost itself in the black waters of the fountain. …no, not a prince. A human. A seventeen-year-old human who had died and been reborn on the same night.

"You'll live", he promised – and the usual mischievous smirk crept back up on his lips. "Though I don't think you'll like the process."

"What proce-mmph…!"

Mephisto struggled like a fish on a hook in the water, but Shiro cupped his head firmly and kept their lips pressed together. The illness was in his lungs, and this was the easiest – and most enjoyable – way of drawing it out. It tasted awful, like foul blood and rotten timber – tch, his host body would hate him for this, but he could heal better than the scrawny little shrimp could. He felt the disease leaving him, probably, for in a few seconds the human stopped struggling.

…heh.

Shiro ran his tongue gently over the parched lips, kissed them and nursed them in ways that would induce a different kind of fever in the young prince. Oh yes, he'd take advantage of human weakness, mental or physical. Besides, it couldn't really be called "taking advantage of" when the other returned the kiss, right…?

"How mmh~ H-how long is this process?"

The prince's face was flustered, but it was a healthier glow than fever, and bore only a remote similarity to the usual flush of anger and embarrassment.

"That's taken care of long ago", Shiro replied with a smug grin. "You seemed to enjoy it, so I thought I'd be a shame to stop."

…as beet-red as his favourite shirt. What a most fascinating skin colour.

"That- That was my first kiss…!" And no wonder he hadn't been chasing girls, like other boys his age did. "And you had the  _audacity_ to-!" His angry oration dissolved into violent coughing. No blood came up, but Shiro could swear all the bones in the thin body rattled together like drumsticks.

"Easy, Mephi, it's gonna take some time before you can throw things at me again", Shiro chuckled and lifted the sopping wet prince out of the fountain. "Now we need to put you back in bed before anyone comes to check on you."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **My second idea** (all yours if you want it, just let me know) was to make Mephisto a drifter of a conman who used his charm and wit to woo wealthy widows. ^_^' (Come on, you can see Mephisto doing that, can't you?) In that scenario, he and Shiro would find themselves competing for the attentions of the same widow (one for her money, one for her soul), and after gaining a better understanding of each others' motives they would team up and become some sort of Bonnie  & Clyde duo that acted wingmen for each other and essentially raised hell wherever they went. The first idea won out because then I could make Mephisto miserable… x'D *writers are a cruel breed of humans*


	12. Concerning leftovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Leftovers of various kinds. ^_^'** This chapter will be updated with more of them as the main fic progresses (can't spoil for you). They aren't even proper one-shots, just... leftovers.

 

**Chronologically set after Terra ch 45. This is a stupid snippet that happened after I had a laughing fit over the first chapter in the manga, when I noticed that Satan has a little star popping off his fingers when he has possessed Shiro and introduces himself to Rin. I see who Mephisto got his dramatic vein from... xD**

Shiro stood still for a long time, watching the demon play chess with himself: until a piece was put down with a certain click. He didn't know why he knew what that sound meant: he just did.

"As pleasant as silence is, coming from you it's unnatural", Mephisto concluded, glancing up at him beneath drooping eyelids. "And contrary to popular belief, I can't read minds."

Oh, just spit it out!

"It's bugged me for a while now." Shiro tilted his head to the side, one eyebrow cocked to fire the question. "I resemble my dad." This was so… stupid. "…do you…?"

Mephisto turned back to his chessboard with a merry snicker.

"What a thing to ask! We share the same sense of humor, that's about as far as the likeness goes."

Shiro's face carried out impressive contortionist acrobatics as he tried to apply that.

"Pfff-mh-mfwehehehehahahahaahaaahaaa…!"

When he was still laughing after half a minute, Mephisto's curl started twitching in annoyance.

"Do tell, what has my father ever done to inspire such mirth in a human…?"

"Ehehehah, haah, ah… just imagining Satan attacking sleeping people with permanent marker…!"

Mephisto covered his eyes with a bony hand, merry laughter trickling from his fanged smile.

"I suppose he would, if given the chance…"

**(A/N: You know you're picturing Satan as a horned Jigglypuff now... x3 )**

* * *

**This short dialogue was written as part of Inferno ch 12, at the demon festival Hyakki Yagyou. I intended it to be after Mephisto had left the "dance" and saved Shiro from the snake demon, but in the end it didn't work out.**

"Had a good time…?"

Mephisto's ears twitched near imperceptibly, like a hypersensitive radar picking up interesting signals.

"My my: are you  _jealous_ , Shiro~?"

Shiro felt his face heat up like a thermometer put in boiling water.

" _Keep calm. Don't rise to the bait. Play the game_ ", he told himself and kept a cocky face. "Just trying to be civil, but if that's how you wanna play it – out of curiosity; do you top or bottom?"

"Want to find out~?" he asked with a smirk that made Shiro feel like a string instrument tuned wrong.

"Alright, I back down", he said, raising his hands in surrender. "You're perverted on a way too high level."

" _You_ asked~"

"And in place of an answer, I got a question I never asked for."

"You can have an answer, too. I am content to do both; preferably at the same time."

Shiro let pretence fly and buried his face in his hands with a pained groan.

"I don't think I can ever look at you again…"

"Easily solved, if I top."

"For god's sake, stop it…!"

* * *

**This one is a "what if" sidetrack from Inferno ch 38, when Shiro and Mephisto hold their improvised little spoken word battle in the principal's office. _Midorchi-chan_ suggested that "detergent" does rhyme with "serpent", and... Well it does. So let's have Shiro fit that into the rhyme, shall we?**

"I do not court coincidence if I can have a say; to plan ahead and strategize, that's the demon way." Mephisto hadn't expected that kind of reply, but picked up instantly in his own smooth cadence.

"To what end would you strategize, if that was your design? The Yaonaru don't seem to think your intentions are benign." Ngh, it didn't sound as good as when Mephisto did it…

"Benign's a sell-sword word, dependent on who speaks it; a reply would cut with forking edge whoever he that seeks it", he returned with ease, crossing his arms with an amused glint in the green eyes.

"Tie that tongue of silver still and speak less like a serpent; or else I'll pin you down to earth and scrub it with detergent." ÒuÓ

"Tie me up and pin me down, young knight; I won't resist, I promise you. Just make those ropes sit firm and tight, and so will I be too." êwê

"That... is probably the reason Dimwit never featured me rhyming serpent with detergent in the fic, isn't it?" X~X "You're so fucking disgus- Goddammit Mephisto now I can't stop thinking-!" 8E

"If you'd rather like me silent, and not explore down south, I'll have you know it's also tight and wet inside my-"

"MEPHISTO!"

 


	13. Concerning douchy concubi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Fox Populi commented on Inferno ch 48:** "YOU MONSTER. First you seduce me with titles like "one night stand" and "is it worth it", then you taunt me by not making those foreshadowings come to reality, then you have me laugh my socks off, only to drown me in confusion and worry and sorry the very next moment.
> 
> I demand an apology, in the form of a very fast uploaded new chapter explaining what the fuck happened to Kasumi.
> 
> And preferably having Mephisto comfort poor Shiro. Preferably something that has to do with taking out frustrations. You know, pushing a certain demon against the wall and such. These are just suggestions of course... *innocent whistle*"
> 
>  
> 
> **And Dimwit responded:**

Chocolate. Pillow, blanket, paper tissue – the old goat really had thought of everything. He showed up in the hospital room with a whole arsenal of... stuff.

"So~ I hear somebody needs comforting…?"

All sunshine and sugary smiles. Just the kind of comfort Shiro needed.

"Go away", he muttered from his chair, chin resting on his folded arms atop Kasumi's sickbed.

"That's harsh, Shiro – I'm trying my best to be a good friend here!"

" _You're_ here because some perverted internet wraith wants you to be here." Shiro shot him a dark glare over his shoulder. "I got the memo."

"And it specifically said 'comfort poor Shiro'", the demon added, whereupon the bastard _space-bent_ the chair so that he could seat himself behind Shiro. "I believe it also mentioned something about disappointment over the choice of titles. Unfulfilled expectations and such~" Thin arms wound possessively around him, and a low, rich voice snaked into his ear: "Perhaps a remake of _One Night Stand_ might solve the problem?"

"I don't think we got the same memo", Shiro replied in brimstone tones and stared straight ahead into the white hospital wall.

"That so~?" Hot breath wafted against Shiro's hair, as Mephisto snuggled… very close. "I'm sure it's just an unfortunate mix-up~"

"Yeah, probably. The one I got was about taking out frustrations. Pushing certain demons up the wall and such. Any idea who they could have meant with 'certain demons'?"

"I have no idea~" Yet, as blithely innocent as his response was, the gloved hands halted their journey towards his hips.

"Right. So, I take it you will be pushing for _One Night Stand_?" Shiro unfolded his arms from the bed, revealing two _occupied_ hands. "Because my response to that would be _Is it worth it?_ " he said, turning in his seat as he placed the muzzle of one gun between Mephisto's eyes.

"Hah?" The green eyes blinked twice in confusion. "A _plastic_ gun…?"

"Close", Shiro replied with a grin well worthy a demon: "Squirt gun."

Filled with holy water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dimwit is a douchy concubus. It's all about the teasing. =v=


	14. Concerning other lost bets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Dare mo** and **annichch9817** were wondering what would have happened if Shiro had lost the bet in **Inferno ch 52**. I've already done the cosplay thing, so… um, mostly leftover ideas. ^_^' Some suggestive themes ahead.

They had _agreed_ between themselves that there would be no cheating. No bending of space, no stopping time. No magic, only skill. Unfortunately, the man who operated _Mepphy Shooting_ didn't know that. All he knew was that Johann Faust V was a game enthusiast, a sore loser, and his employer. That was Shiro's theory, at least, since there was _no way_ he could have lost against Mephisto at target shooting unless he'd been given a gun with a flawed sight.

* * *

"Is so cute, Shiro-kun!" Midori beamed. "And cute face, too!"

Shiro's facial expression was _not_ cute, and neither were the white cat's ears clipped to his hair. Or the cat's tail strapped to his waist. Or the bloody _bell_ around his neck, which kept jingling since Midori just _couldn't_ leave it alone.

"Sen-chan, could you collar your girlfriend a moment so I can pocket this one?" he mumbled over the pool table, eyes and cue stick focused on number seven.

"She wants the bell", the little Futotsuki girl informed from one of the common room's barstools.

"I could never have guessed." With a crisp click, the ball went… into the wood beside the pocket. "Crap." He straightened back up, and slid a finger inside the silk ribbon around his neck to tug some more space for his Adam's apple. "I'd give it to you, but I don't think Mephisto would approve."

He vividly remembered just how much Mephisto _did_ approve of that… what was it called? Neko boy outfit? Some stupid otaku crap the old goat had ordered the minute after he won their bet. And when the delivery had arrived he'd… What's the word? Fangirled? Fanboyed…? Acted absolutely bat-shit silly over how "kawaii" Shiro was with cat's ears.

"Betting with demons is stupid thing, Shiro-kun."

"Uh-huh." He was damn lucky their bet had only included clothing – Mephisto had wanted _pictures_ and _posing_. "Sadly, I am a stupi- Oi! Don't touch my balls!"

Across the table, Midori did stop poking at the pool balls: and over at the regular tables, Sen suffocated a bout of snorting laughter in her sleeve.

"Really, Shiro-kun…? You don't like it when girls touch your balls?"

Ah, man… He just chuckled helplessly, hanging on the cue stick he'd propped up against the floor.

"Now you've got me imagining shoving a cue stick into my balls…" His fingers raked through his hair in their usual habit, and almost pulled off one of the ears. Grunting in annoyance, he rested the cue stick in the crook of his arm and began the endeavour of re-clipping it in place. "My mouth is my worst enemy, you know? Making me say the wrong things and making bets with demons."

His expertise with hair really only extended to cutting and dyeing. That clip wasn't getting back on anytime soon. How had Mephisto done this…?

"You're no good with that." Sen had trotted over to him, and he obediently bent down so she could put the ear in place. "There." A pleased smile touched her lips. "You almost look like a demon, wearing these." Big, dim eyes looked him over, slowly, slowly. "Really, you do. I don't know how, but they fit you."

Wasn't the first time Sen said weird shit, but nonetheless it made him feel a bit awkward.

"Huh… Maybe that's why he liked them so much on me."

"Maybe Sir Pheles wishes you were a demon?" Midori pondered, busy with checking how far down into the pool table pocket she could get her hand. "If you were, he could bed you."

"I think I'd rather shove a cue stick into my balls."

* * *

"Oi, Shiro: weren't ya gonna go down-town with us ta see Ryuuji-san's performance?" Shizuku's voice inquired, slightly muffled on the other side of the dorm room door.

"I was… but… you know, my bet with Mephisto…?" Shiro had retreated to his room, and he was not planning on leaving it.

"Yeah, I heard about the neko boy thing. Dun' worry, people will be there ta lis'en ta Ryuuji-san, not go weirdo-spottin'. An' if they do, I think Midori-chan 'as tried out some new spaced-out hairdo on li'l miss Futotsuki that'll draw more attention than you."

Oh, that sounded nice, didn't it? Pity he didn't have the neko outfit anymore. Yes, _pity_.

"Look…" Shiro muttered through the door. "He picked new stuff for me to wear, and I really don't wanna go outside like this."

Silence.

"…are ya naked?" the voice deadpanned.

"What the f-?! _No_ , I'm not naked!" he sputtered. "I just can't go out like this, okay? Tell Ryuuji-san I wanted to come but I got too much homework to do, or something."

"Come on, 'ow bad can it be? Yer pride can take a li'l bruisin', it won't kill ya", he said, trying not to sound too pleading. "Ryuji-san was really looking forward ta showin' how much that summer tour with the pros 'as improved 'is playin', ya know."

Oh, goodie, bring on the bad conscience and broken expectations. …and after a long, _long_ inner debate between Stupid Shiro and Even More Stupid Shiro, he opened his big, trouble-causing mouth:

"Think you can let me borrow one of your ponchos to wear outside?"

"Yeah, sure thing. …ya want it now? 'Kay, I'll get it, hang on."

Shiro was quite sure that poncho had a hood, and if it did he might be able to avoid identification. If it didn't, he'd just… have to explain the long tresses of fake hair somehow. And those _bloody_ uncomfortable shoes.

"Here ya g-" Oh sweet mother of God, the sight Shizuku beheld when he opened the door. "Shi… ro…? Nh, ngh… NGAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

"Gimme that", Shiro snarled over the rattling of colourful bangles as he snatched up the poncho from the floor. The rest of Shizuku was also on the floor, laughing hysterically. "And fucking quit it, will you?"

Oh come on, he just wanted to get the damn thing over his head! But there were pigtail clips of long, curly white fake hair in the way, and his glasses were in the way, and the bloody _rainbow beads_ in his glasses strings were in the way…!

"Oh sweet Buddha ye've gyahahahahahaa ye've got _stockings!_ An'- an' friggin' _bloomers…_!"

"Who said you could peep under my skirt, asshole?!" Lolita shoes were uncomfortable, but damn were they good for stomping on people.

"But it'sssahahahah ow ow izza _lovely_ skirt, Shi- _ow!_ I always thought ye were missin' s-ahhahahahaheheee some pink 'n' dots an' _ribbo-_ OW don't kick my nuts ya crazy tranny!"

* * *

"And I don't care what it is as long as it's got trousers!" Shiro finished, after shouting at Mephisto's smug grin for a good fifteen minutes.

Shizuku probably still lay on the floor in his dorm room. No amount of kicking had helped, and in the end Shiro had thrown the poncho at him, stomped over to the door, and pulled the key to Faust Mansion out of his dainty Hello Kitty purse.

It was a testament to how awful he looked that _Belial_ , Mr. Professional Stone Face, had cast one glance at him, and rushed out into the kitchen to laugh his ass off out of sight.

"Your body language clashes terribly with your dress", Mephisto remarked with the concerned look of a shop assistant doing his damnedest not to understand a customer's frustration.

"My _whole body_ clashes with this stupid thing!"

"Not to mention that face you make: very uncute…"

"I know something that will clash with _your_ face if you don't get me something else to wear! With _trousers!_ "

Mephisto put down the manga he had been reading with an animated sigh, and raised his fingers to snap them – while at the same time raising his eyebrow as if to say "are you sure about this?" Yes, Shiro was very sure about this. A fucking Hello Kitty jumpsuit would be better than this.

*poof*

…well, gotta be grateful for the small blessing: he did get trousers, even if that was the extent of-

"What the…? Isn't this, like, half an SS uniform?" he blurt out as he inspected the trousers and the high, black boots a bit more closely. The shit _looked_ military – or like a police uniform, now that he noticed the handcuffs in his belt and the… riding crop… and… gag ball… "Oh hell you didn't…"

"Why, goes much better with your body language – and _really_ well with your body..." He could practically _feel_ Mephisto's bedroom gaze on his skin as it touched places it _shouldn't_. "Why must you be so difficult, Shiro? That's the blushing face you should have made with the Lolita dress", he whined, and sounded very earnest about it, which didn't count for shit when you looked at his grin and saw how far off in fantasy land he was.

"Is it too late to ask if I can have the dress back…?" Shiro mumbled miserably from behind his hands. "I feel filthy…"

"I think you need to get some perspective on 'filthy', mein Offizier~"


	15. Concerning the ones left behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …I wrote this when I had cleared C:LoS:MoF at 100% the day before (that's short for _Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate_ , because simplicity is for lesser beings), that might have something to do with it. Then I woke up the day after and found a request from **tarballGZ**. I started writing one thing and it turned into something entirely different (IT'S YOUR FAULT GABRIEL!).
> 
> Mind, I've been wanting to write something of Rin and Yukio regarding the late Shiro, so this was good practice, even if the consistency is way out in deep space. This connects with everything in TEotB and is consistent with nothing. |D
> 
> Relates to chapters 27, 39, 45, 67, and "Concerning lost bets" here in BtEatB.

"Hey, Mephisto! I just had an idea!"

Rin did have ideas from time to time. Most of them concerned cooking and turned out to be very good ideas. Regardless if they were good or bad, Rin had a natural enthusiasm that made him believe in them and try to realise them unless someone - usually his brother - was there to stop him. The curious thing this time was that Yukio hadn't tried to stop him - even when his idea involved throwing open the door to Sir Pheles' office with so much force it almost tore from its hinges.

Sir Pheles was not amused by this. It reminded him too much of what Shiro used to do when he came to accuse him of this-or-that - in fact, when he thought about it, it was probably Shiro's fault this time, too. He had been far too lenient in the boy's upbringing, shielding him from the world of demons (and civil manners) knowing _full well_ that...

Actually, when he thought about it, Shiro had probably done it on purpose simply to annoy him: a final parting gift, if he ever became their legal guardian. Trust the little hell-raiser to cause trouble even after death.

"And what idea may that be?" he inquired without looking up from his PSP. He was mashing buttons furiously and Golbez was going down. Was. Going. _Down_.

"You're the King of Time and Space", beamed the oldest twin, "which means you can turn back time!"

"Nii-san assumes so", Yukio quickly interjected as if to save his brother from an embarrassing misconception... while silently wishing that his brother was right. Sir Pheles could tell, as easily as he could tell the number of moles on his face by looking at him. Shiro had done a much better job with that twin, in his opinion. A rational mind that took in all factors and calculated their outcome swiftly. "Is it possible to travel back in time, Sir?"

"Of course it is", Sir Pheles replied without looking up from his game. "The question is 'why would I let you'?"

"What do you mean by- Oooh could we, like, accidentally change history?"

Inwardly, Sir Pheles smiled. Even though Rin was wagging his tail back and forth like a dog eager for a treat, and overall being exceptionally poor material for a prince of Gehenna, he could appreciate that the boy seemed to think the world worked like manga.

"Changing history is like bending a beam of solid iron once it's cooled", he dismissed, and narrowly dodged Golbez' attack. "The course of time must be shaped in the present, while the iron is still hot and malleable from intention's furnace. No, you cannot change the past: my question is why you want to go there at all?"

"To meet Father Fujimoto again. Sir Pheles, we barely knew our fa- adoptive father. He raised us, but he never told us anything about himself, his life, or his reasons for doing what he did when he spared us. Please, Sir Pheles." The plea was earnest, no doubt; but veiled in such thick layers of formality and control that it came out robotically stiff. "We need answers. If you really can control time, please let us meet our father when he was alive."

"When he was young." All attention switched to Rin and his goofy smile. "Come on, Yukio!" he answered his brother's inquiring glance. "You must've wondered what he was like at our age? When he went to cram school, when he went on his first mission – that kind of stuff! Why make him tell us about his life when we've got the chance to _see_ it, right?" he bubbled with excitement…

…and behind the grand wooden desk, Sir Pheles grinned into his PSP screen. They wanted to know what Shiro was like when he was young? People came up with all sorts of ideas of how famous individuals were in youth. The twins had two quite different ideas about that, he was sure. Shiro had been both father and exorcist, but rarely the two at once. Rin knew the father. Yukio knew the exorcist.

He could imagine the looks on their faces when they learnt how the teenager Shiro had been: and that was all the payment he needed.

"I have decided, boys~!" Sir Pheles declaimed, and poofed the handheld away to its home spot on his bed table. He rose like a Jack-in-the-box, arms flying out to the sides to announce his decision. "As Fujimoto's life-long friend, and legal guardian of at least one of you, it would be a disgrace to his memory and his confidence in me to withhold such information from you. So, without further ado…!"

He then plucked a golden stopwatch out of his pocket and began to fiddle with it. It was a bizarre contraption with least three sets of arms on the clock face, and the manic grin the headmaster flashed when he turned the knob on top of it should have warned at least Yukio that something was off.

Both twins landed sprawled on the expensive carpet in the office. Travelling through time was peculiarly similar to falling – sideways, and with your gut falling slightly ahead of the rest of you. It also had nothing to do with dignified landings. Yukio picked himself up quickly, as the professional he was, and surveyed his surroundings; Rin remained on the floor to shake the vertigo out of his head. Though Yukio was the one who first concluded where they were, it was his impulsive brother that first voiced it:

"Oi, what's this, you clown? We're still in the same place!"

"That, I have no doubt about", responded the headmaster from behind his desk. "However, I think you should be directing your questions at the dashing gentleman over there." He pointed, and Rin's eyes turned the size of saucers.

"Eh?!" His head spun back and forth like the arm of a metronome. "There's two Mephisto?!"

One was bad enough. Two and the world wouldn't last till afternoon.

"The present Sir Pheles and the past one", Yukio murmured, not sure which of the two identical headmasters he should be addressing. "Am I correct?"

It seemed like the only logical conclusion - logic being a relative phenomenon where Sir Pheles was concerned, of course.

"I like the one with glasses better", past-Pheles informed the present-Pheles who was standing by the twins. "Although, the half-demon one is far more… interesting."

"Quite the semblance, isn't he?" present-Pheles smiled. "And I do say, you are quite dashing yourself."

The twins had a distinct feeling they were talking over their heads. Well, Yukio had that feeling. Rin still gawked like a fish at the doppelgängers and silently wished that he and Yukio could have been identical twins. They could have swapped clothes and swapped places and lots of other cool things.

"Some things never change", past-Pheles smiled back. "Now, what is my reason for bringing these two back some…" He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, as if calculating something with factors sublimating in the air surrounding them. "…thirty years?"

"I was aiming for thirty-two." Present-Pheles tucked the stopwatch into the chest pocket of his tailcoat. "We were hoping to meet Fujimoto Shiro at nineteen years of age…?"

"I see…" A disturbing look crept up on the principal's face; one that did elicit the delayed response of suspicion in Yukio. "You are a bit early, then: Fujimoto-kun is currently eighteen and a half."

"We'll manage, I'm sure. Come along, boys – time to meet True Cross Academy's most _famous_ personage~"

With a sharp bang, they found themselves outside the very familiar old dorm where the twins were the sole occupants. Thirty years back, however, it was barely recognisable. The dorm was in pristine condition, no chips in the facade and no boarded-up windows. Light poured out from several apartments where students had retired for the day to study or simply relax. And out the door...

Neither twin said a word. They felt that even the slightest sound would disrupt the magic, would make the white-haired boy in True Cross' school uniform dissolve in smoke and be gone.

"Dad…" Rin was barely breathing, let alone aware that he'd spoken – or taken a step forward.

"Wait", Yukio cautioned, although he never took his eyes from the teenage Fujimoto Shiro that walked off in the dusk. "Sir Pheles, can we talk to him? We won't… It won't cause trouble in the future?"

"He won't remember talking to you in the future", the principal replied. "Here, you are the ghosts: any interaction with him will soon fade from his memory, like a dream in flight of dawn."

Yukio let go of Rin's arm.

Someone else beat them to it, however. A tall girl – with amazing boobs, to Rin's delight – had halted their dad by the walkway, and was talking to him. They were too far away for them to make out any words, but the exchange ended abruptly when-

"Whoa, what the-?!"

"She _punched_ him…?"

Sir Pheles was pleased. Rin's flabbergasted expression he could have on a daily basis if he so wanted, but Yukio's befuddled face was a rare treat that he savoured to the fullest.

"Who _was_ that?" Rin blurt out, watching dumbfounded as the seething young woman stalked off. "Why'd she hit dad?"

"That was a young woman by the name of Katsuda Agari: your father's classmate. He was famous in his time for hitting on girls; and for being hit by girls", Sir Pheles snickered. "I believe he will be rather occupied with sorting this out at the moment, so maybe we should try another time for speaking to him?"

Without even waiting for an answer, he fished out his stopwatch and set them falling sideways through time again.

The setting was the same, as the watch transported travellers through time only and not space. The dorm building sat in a frame of barren flowerbeds, surrounded by a biting cold that spoke of February or early March: and before the twins had gotten to their feet, a white-haired whirlwind had blown past them down the walkway.

"Hey, wait up! Da- uh, Fujimoto Shiro!"

His shouts fell on deaf ears. Wherever Shiro was going, it was more important than stopping to chat with strangers. Rin wished he'd had more than his uniform shirt on when they went on this trip, and Yukio wished he'd had his combat boots and not sneakers.

"I always thought dad was a womanizer, not a women's punching bag", Rin huffed as they sprinted after their father. "Reminds me of Shima. All he needs to do is dye his hair pink."

"People can be very different in youth and adulthood. I think father was-" Yukio began, but was cut short when Fujimoto swung himself over a banister and there were _two_ surprised yelps heard from the flowerbed below.

The twins reached the banister in time to see Fujimoto hanging by the jacket lapels. His captor was a tall young man in exorcist robes.

"Who is that?" asked said exorcist.

"That's Fujimoto Shiro", growled another guy, who was just getting up from the ground and dusting himself off. "The orphan I was talking about."

"Orphan?" said the twins in unison, completely forgetting about the chase.

"Yes: Shiro was an orphan, like you."

And when had Mephisto caught up with them? Had he even ran…?

"He never told us…" Yukio murmured.

"He does have the mouth of an unwashed street rat", sneered the tall one, who was almost lifting Fujimoto from the ground by now. "What are you doing here?"

"Oi, you don't talk like that to my dad", Rin growled, mounting one foot on the banister to leap over.

"I could ask you the same." They both froze. It wasn't quite the voice of the father they knew, but it was… their father's voice. "I didn't know Kita-san dated."

Their father's young, cocky, impudent voice.

"A rat with a clever mouth", drawled the tall one, a dangerous note of steel in his voice. "And you will make good use of it. We need to have a little talk."

"And you need to see a doctor", Fujimoto smiled, head-butted his captor over the bridge of his nose, and took off in the confusion and surprise that followed.

The twins merely stared after him, each with his own amusing facial expression.

"Dad was awesome!"

"Dad was a delinquent…"

And Sir Pheles was having a merry time of it.

"Kihihihihi you're both right, you're both right: now, let's see where he was in such a hurry to get~"

Another poof of pink smoke, and they were relocated to True Cross Town. It was evening, and dark as it only is in the winter season, but the night was lit by street lamps and the sharp neon lights from shop signs. The one Sir Pheles led the way to belonged to a karaoke bar.

"Look at the cheesiness of that…" The colourful posters by the entrance stole Rin's attention immediately. The great artists of the 70's were plastered all over the wall. "I hope dad never had pants as tight as these. You see _everything…_ "

Contemporary fashion was the least of Yukio's concerns. The father he knew had been professional, meticulous, calm. This teenager was nothing like that man; if anything (and to Yukio's horror) he was like an older version of Rin. Or that Rin was truly like... That _Rin_ was like...

Yukio put his thoughts firmly out of his mind and followed Sir Pheles through the double doors.

Fujimoto had been late for a friend's birthday party, they were told; but said birthday party would be a great opportunity to blend in among the guests and get to talk with their father. Both twins were thinking up questions to ask, when Mephisto suddenly came to a stop and opened one of the corridor's doors. Shockwaves of music and laughter blared out. Rin didn't bother with pretense, and clamped his hands over his ears: Yukio was still occupied with processing the image of his father in the middle of the dim karaoke room, sharing microphone with a half-demon girl and singing Junko Yagami's hit _Mizuiro no Ame_ in keys it was never meant to be sung. He looked… nothing like what he'd expected.

"What the hell's this?" Rin grimaced. "Dad sung better than this during mass!"

"Very few people sing well when they're drunk, Okumura-kun."

Yukio did not approve of underage drinking. He barely approved of adults drinking, if one counted the eternally-18 Shura as an adult. And he had definitely never wanted to see his father as a drunk teenager.

"Can you take us to another time, Sir Pheles?" he shouted above the noise. "I would like to see what father did when he wasn't drunk, or chasing girls! He was one of the best students in the Academy's history! He was an exorcist prodigy!" He couldn't have been... like _that_.

* * *

One explosive pink poof and one turn of the stopwatch later, they found themselves in the underground base that was the Japanese Branch's headquarters, far below the Academy. Rin's head turned 360 degrees to look at the high vaults of the ceiling and the deep, neverending shadows that branched through the arches. In his defence, last time he had been there his head had been locked between Shura's arm and her chest, which limited the view quite a bit.

"Shiro was a prodigy, true, but not in every subject", Sir Pheles confided. "Swordsmanship was by far his weakest point."

"It was?" Rin's ears perked up. "That's why he asked Shura-san to teach me?"

"I said it _was_ his weak point", Mephisto pointed out as he led them over the paved stone bridges. "He improved, with a little special tutoring."

Up ahead, on one of the platforms the bridges connected to, two shapes bathed in the harsh music of clashing blades. _This_ was the Fujimoto Yukio knew: steel focus and lethal precision. The Paladin had been strong. Calm. Wise. He had been solid ground that never faltered: and Yukio could believe, thirty years into the future, that the young man who crossed blades with Sir Pheles was that Paladin.

" _You_ trained him…?" Rin didn't seem sure this could be the case, even if the battle before him told him so.

"I couldn't resist", Mephisto reminisced with a smile. "It's not often you find such a talent. He was clever, strong, determined…" The battle ended abruptly, when Fujimoto succumbed to what seemed to be a previously sustained injury in his side. "And reckless."

"Exceptionally unintelligent, even for you", past-Mephisto concluded, voice echoing in the subterranean arches. "With or without injury, you couldn't have won. Now, my little lion, you are at my beck and call for one year from this day."

Two pairs of eyes, one a muddy turqoise and one strikingly blue, darted to Mephisto.

"What did you mean by that?"

"What just happened?"

Rin may have been half demon, but he could be tremendously blue-eyed when it came to how demons worked; Yukio, on the other hand, was well acquainted with demons and their tricks, and would suspect the demon called Sir Pheles of any trick imaginable. However, he had never had _proof_. This might be just that. If Sir Pheles turned out to have had unsanctioned contracts that put students at risk, then...

"Shiro and I were close friends", the principal smiled gleefully, "and games and bets were things we both enjoyed. You never knew…? Fufufufu I'm not surprised he never told you of this particular bet!"

The stopwatch was turned another bit forward, and when the pink smoke released them they were surrounded by stands stacked with anime merchandise. It was a very small convention, for this was in the early days of such, but they could still spot visitors with t-shirts of their favourite characters, and even one or two…

"My god…"

It was impossible not to spot Mephisto's one-ninety-five stature in the crowd of Japanese. The huge, 18th century wig did nothing for his stealth either.

"…ya know, I get why you ordered us to cross-dress to fight the ghost in the girls' bathroom", Rin snorted, trying his best to just grin wide and not crack up laughing. "You have a thing for that, don't you?"

"And you were so _moe_ , Rin~!" he chirped, wiggling with joy in a way that would have looked very strange if they hadn't been at a convention.

"Eh, yeah…" He scratched the back of his head sheepishly. This just might be even more awkward than the time Mephisto had invited him for supper. "You make a nice Marie Antoinette, by the way."

"You can tell whom I'm cosplaying?"

Had he ever seen the clown this happy…?

"Yeah, sure. The old man had the whole _Rose of Versailles_ manga in the bookshelf."

"You might want to thank me for that. He liked that series a lot – and still he was so grumpy about cosplaying Lady Oscar…"

That Yukio had been quiet the whole time was probably because he had already noticed that Lady Oscar wore a pair of familiar round spectacles. His brain was quite happy lingering on those spectacles and forgetting about the rest.

"Wow. He really looks like a girl. Uh, or a guy, I guess. A girl who's dressed up as a guy. Or, no, he looks like a guy dressing up as a girl dressing up as a guy…?"

"More sides to your father than you were aware of, Okumura-kun?" Sir Pheles asked with a glance at Yukio, while Rin was busy sorting out the right term for Fujimoto's cosplay. Yukio didn't reply. Pheles wondered briefly if that was because he didn't want to or if he wasn't able to but kept prattling cheerfully without missing a beat. "Shiro was very efficient in his work, but in private he was an easygoing nature – and quite the prankster, I should add."

"What the hell are you doing?!" Fujimoto's voice exploded from the crowd of camera-wielding convention visitors. "You kissed me, you jerk!"

"Then again, so am I", he snickered at the ruckus. "And people wondered why we got along…"

"…you kissed the old man?" Rin deadpanned. No wonder their dad had never told about the betting - and other things that Rin would rather remain ignorant about.

"Just a small peck for show's sake." He shot the young Esquire a wink that could have meant anything. "Can't very well go around and kiss my students on a regular basis: I'd be excommunicated before you can say sesquipedality." Say what? "I had a photo of it sent to me years later, by a German tourist who happened to be here at the time. If you would ever wish to see it?"

Neither of them wanted to. What Rin really did want to, however…

"I've always wanted to fight alongside you guys. The three of us together." He leveled his gaze firmly at his brother. Yukio didn't understand his flames. Didn't understand that he _needed_ to use them, if he was ever going to control them and feel at ease with them. If he was going to use them to protect others. "Can we do that, Mephisto? Can I at least see the old man in a real fight?"

* * *

You could barely tell if it was night or day: the sky was a typhoon of black feathers and hoarse squawking, and the scarce lamplight out in the street flickered in talons and beating wings. They stood flush against the wall of a house, disoriented and aware of only their beating hearts.

"You have your guns, you have your sword, and uniforms – good, good~ Shiro will show up a few moments from now, and probably take you for reinforcements", Mephisto predicted calmly. "Keep in mind that he doesn't know who you are. And keep in mind", he murmured with a wicked gleam deep in the green eyes, "that while this is his past, it is also your present; Shiro can't die here, but you can. He's young, but a highly skilled exorcist even so; and you are the sons of Satan."

Gunfire from within the house across the street put an abrupt end to the conversation. The front door opened, and somebody rushed out – _three_ somebodies, one adult and two children. And hundreds, _hundreds_ of tengus.

"Whoa whoa, it's gonna take the kid!"

"Nii-san, wait! We can't just-!"

Rapid gunfire and winged bodies bursting in clouds of miasma and black feathers. The flock shied away from the humans and-

" _Father…_ "

Yukio was firing on reflex before he even realised he'd joined Rin and his father in the fray. Father Fujimoto, the strongest exorcist in history, grabbing hold of the screaming little girl and hiding her behind his back. His father, alive and breathing. _Alive._

Yukio felt the recoil in his hands. Felt the familiar pressure on the triggers. He didn't hear the guns go off.

Didn't hear when they clicked empty.

"-eeping, dammit!"

The world returned to him with the hard blow of earth against his shoulder when he was tackled down. Rin lay on top of him, and above a tengu shrieked at the missed target.

"Snap out of it, Yukio!" He bashed another tengu to pieces with the sheathed Kurikara. "The kid's been snatched!"

"Oi! Flimsy-tail! Some cover over here!"

Like electricity. Like a speeding signal activating autopilot responses in his system. Yukio's body reacted, rolled onto his feet, reached for a new clip of bullets.

He'd heard that voice shout commands in the field so many times.

" _It's almost like it never happened._ "

"Glasses-guy: get inside, the tengus have breached the windows."

Yukio took a split second to assess the situation. Rin was dashing back and forth and beating tengus, while Fujimoto was taking aim at-

*bang*

Another tengu just swooped into his line of fire, and he missed the one carrying the child. Yukio calculated it all in milliseconds: the angle, the speed, the airborne mayhem in between:

"You can't shoot at this distance, it's madness…!"

"Watch me."

*bang*

The tengu lost control of its wing and plummeted for the ground in a mad, whirling spiral. All three of them took off at the same time: Rin, Shiro, Yukio…

_I've always wanted to fight alongside you guys._

Rin was the fastest, and caught the tengu and the child as they fell. But just how were they going to get the child out of the kicking, pecking, thrashing mess of cla-? Fujimoto dropped the gun, not a moment's hesitation, and held the thick beak shut with his bare hands.

"Get the kid! Quick!"

How? There were still talons and whipping wings and-

With a single forceful twist, Fujimoto snapped the demon's neck right off.

"Wow, man, that's-!"

*bang*

When the demon's claws went limp and dropped the child, Yukio finished the job with a blessed bullet. Without any word to coordinate their movements, they grabbed the kid and fought their way back into the building and the panicked mother.

"Hold the door!" Fujimoto commanded when they were all inside.

Rin slammed the entrance door shut and plastered himself over it; Yukio stood right next to him, firing at approaching demons through the small windows on each side of it.

"Wow, Yukio…! Our dad's the coolest guy in the world…!" he breathed.

Only then did Yukio notice that his brother was crying. His smile was bright as ever and his eyes shining, and in the midst of all that the tears seemed to slip out unnoticed.

" _Does he even know it himself...?_ " Probably not. "Focus, Nii-san. Remember what Sir Pheles said."

Yukio turned his attention back to the window: smiling. Yes, Fujimoto had been just like this. Strong. Efficient. Brave. And if he had had a wild side in his youth and yet grown up to the man Yukio knew, then maybe there was hope for his brother to turn into a responsible adult one day?

Fujimoto came rushing back and stuck a slip of warding paper inside the notice of the onsen's opening hours.

"Are there more coming? From the other ryokan; are there more exorcists on the way?" he asked in clipped tones, looking from one twin to the other.

"We assume so, but we don't know how long that will take. We should focus on finding someplace safe for these people." Yukio could hear himself talking, but didn't quite catch what he said. It didn't seem important. It was too surreal, to see a face so familiar and so alien at the same time.

"Yeah, 'someplace safe' – this house's got fucking paper walls", Fujimoto grunted. "The only place we could-" He leaned forward, staring at the notice. "The onsen. We'll turn it into holy water. Barricade ourselves there till backup comes. Hey, flimsy-tail and what's-your-name: gather up the people, get them to the onsen. I'll get salt for the blessing."

"Wait!"

Shiro turned, and fired two shots right past Yukio, where demons had reached bony claws in through the windows to rake at the exorcists.

"Ain't got time for that, Moles", he said curtly, and headed for the kitchen.

"In case you run out!" Yukio tossed him one of his guns, fully loaded, and got a grateful nod before their young father vanished through the door.

"Snnrrkukuku 'Moles'…" Rin snickered, as inappropriate as that was for the situation. He couldn't help it. He was so excited he barely knew what to do with himself, and the command to evacuate had been a welcome task. "Come on, Yukio: old man gave us orders", he beamed.

They had made it to the onsen, and the people had been ushered into the pool with a bit of Yukio's language expertise… but Fujimoto was nowhere to be seen. The screeches of tengus cut through the walls and made it sound like the ryokan was crawling with them. The intermittent crack of gunfire was the only thing that told them Fujimoto was still alive. As much as they knew what Mephisto had said about the unchangeable nature of the past, each second weighed an hour on their minds.

"…I'm going", Rin said when the knuckles on the hand that clutched Kurikara couldn't get any whiter. There was a haunted look in his eyes, a look that reached past the door he stared at, past the whirling hurricane of black feathers and thirty-two years into the future.

"Nii-san, remember what Sir Pheles s-"

"I know what the clown said!"

Yukio silenced. Rin's flames only emerged outside the sheath when emotion was involved. Strong emotion. Emotion that couldn't be kept inside.

"I saw the old man die, Yukio", he said; barely more than whispered. "I need to see that he's okay."

No further argument followed. The door shut around the onsen and its refugees while Rin bashed his way through the corridors of the ryokan, through seemingly never-ending throngs of tengus, and wondered…

…wondered what it would be like to return to the present. This was only a lease, a daydream turned real, and in the present he had no old man anymore. Maybe it had been a stupid idea, to request this. Seeing him alive, alive and _young_ and so _very much alive_ …

Maybe it would hurt even more when he wasn't.

"Shit, man, I almost shot you!"

Rin stared dumbly at the gun that lowered away from his face. At the chin that didn't have a single hint of the scratchy beard he'd learnt to fear as a child. At the maroon eyes that had no laughing wrinkles, and no clue who 'flimsy-tail' was.

This hadn't been a stupid idea.

"I'll cover your way to the onsen, old man", he grinned, and grinned even wider at the confused face his dad pulled.

"You can cover me while I tie this up first", he grunted and put down his packet of salt on the wooden floor.

Only then did Rin catch the tang of blood - human blood - about him, and saw that Fujimoto was limping.

"You're injured!"

"Didn't reload fast enough, got a talon in the leg", he summarized, and undid his belt to clasp it above the gash in his thigh. "I'm too high on adrenaline to really feel it, but bleeding to death doesn't sound too great. There's one on your right, by the way."

Rin swiveled around and bashed the brains out of the tengu, quite literally. There were more coming, all the time – and in between swings, his mouth kept moving:

"You're super awesome." He was quite sure it must sound stupid, but that wasn't important. "The coolest guy I know, actually. I wanna be like you one day. Strong and kind and… and awesome."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but thanks for covering me, yeah?" he grinned – that warm, teasing grin he _always_ grinned – and for a moment Rin abandoned all control.

And hugged him.

" _Dad..._ "

Rin squeezed his eyes shut, squeezed them shut around his old man's familiar smell and the familiar tickle of his shaggy neck hairs and wished he could keep it there, just by keeping his eyes shut he could keep his dad back into the present.

"Uh, maybe not the right time…?"

No, definitely not the right time. For him.

"Y-yeah, I'm… sorry." Rin wiped his tears quickly and bit the insides of his cheeks to keep more from coming; bit his cheeks and forced them out into a smile. "Let's get you to the others."

Yukio was on his last ammo clip when they announced their return, with Rin supporting the limping Fujimoto with one arm and wielding his sheathed sword in the other.

In all his life, Yukio had never seen his father wounded. A few scratches at most, but nothing that bled and impaired like this. He had never seen Fujimoto lean on someone for support.

It took a while before he could identify the feeling properly. It was so strange to realise… that Fujimoto Shiro was human. That his childhood hero was not invincible, or perfect. That even the mighty Paladin needed support from others.

…it was equally strange to realise that he himself had still had enough childish naïveté to believe something like that.

"Oi, Yukio: get all the wards over here, we're sealing the door for good! Get started on blessing the water, old man: we'll hold them off till you're done!"

"What the hell's the deal with 'old man'?" Fujimoto allowed himself to snort as he let go of Rin and limped over to the hot water pool. "I've got four rounds left in this: make 'em count, Yukio."

Yukio blacked out so completely at the mention of his name that Rin had to catch the gun Fujimoto tossed to his brother.

"Focus, little bro", he grinned and held it out, tail flailing back and forth excitedly behind him. "Make every moment count."

Every last moment they had together.

By the time rescue came, they were exhausted. Yukio had emptied his last clip and joined Fujimoto in chanting what verses he knew while Rin stayed out of the water, swinging his sheathed sword with tireless strength. Still, even though he was pale from blood loss and looked ready to collapse, Fujimoto made sure everyone got out of the onsen pool in orderly fashion, and into the arms of worried family. The whole bathing area seemed full of worried family, with streaming tears and whispered words of joy.

When it was his own turn, two hands reached out and hauled him up before he had even grabbed them.

"Thanks, guys. Yukio, and… Rin, was it? Okumura. Funny, but… I don't remember seeing you at the Academy", he said sheepishly. "Though you have the uniforms from-"

Rin hugged him, tightly.

"Is your brother always like this?" he asked, pointing at the teenager that clung to him as if he was about to go up in smoke. "'Cause I can see a million ways this could get him in trouble."

Yukio… had nothing to say. What he had was memories. Endless memories of Rin rushing out the school gates to be caught in their father's arms, and of joining him there a few steps behind. He had endless memories; and none of them meant anything to the confused young man before them.

"He gets into trouble in a million ways even without hugging people", he mustered without much substance to it.

"You both do, right?"

Fujimoto gave him a sharp, knowing glance; the kind Rin always got when he wouldn't say if his bruises came from yet another fight. The kind that meant he _knew_ , so you could drop the clueless act already.

"That was a real good gun you lent me", he continued. "It seemed custom built, but even then it was far more advanced than any stuff I've used. Turns out it was made in-"

"Two thousand and seven", Yukio finished. "Run length 6 inches, 9 mm caliber, titanium gun slide, custom made walnut wood grip panels with the Order's emblem carved on both sides, and protective kanji on the runs." He paused, gathering himself for what he would say next: "Given to me by my father when I obtained my Dragoon Meister."

"Your dad has good taste in guns", he concluded calmly. "But what I really wonder is why Mephisto would send you two back in time like this. …and why do you keep hugging me, dammit?!"

Rin hadn't let go for the whole duration of Yukio's exchange with the old man. It didn't matter that Fujimoto was still wet with holy water, and that touching him caused his skin to sizzle and sting. He was alive.

"We don't get to h-hug you again", Rin sobbed thickly against his shoulder. "We didn't get t-to say goodbye when you died. We just wanted to see you again, old man…!"

Yukio swallowed. Once. Twice.

"Nii-san wanted a chance to fight by your side. To know what you were like on missions." Swallowed. Blinked. …blinked again. "He wanted all three of us to fight together, at least once."

Blinked. Blinked; looked down.

He hadn't cried in front of his father since he was nine. He was not going to start crying now. He was an adult. He was going to look after Rin, look after him now that Father Fujimoto couldn't.

…a calloused hand pulled him close, held him tight... and Yukio allowed himself to be a nine-year-old child again.

"Father…"

* * *

Neither of them had seen the look that crossed their father's face when all pieces fell in place. Neither of them saw the glossy film in his eyes when he understood who they were. When he understood who he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *pat pat* Here, have some fanart to dry your eyes.
> 
> http://time-king.deviantart.com/gallery/43289803/TEotB-and-BtEatB-FA


	16. Concerning other things left behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to Inferno ch 29, 37, 42, and 52. It's probably a good idea to skim 29 and 37 before/after/while reading, 'cause this is pretty much an outsider's view of what takes place in those two. ^_^'

He was pretty sure Yukio knew he wanted to do it again. Mephisto _definitely_ knew: that creep seemed to spy on everyone and everything. …a habit that just might have made Rin feel less self-conscious about sneaking into the clown's office during break. Yeah, Mephisto knew. The stopwatch was left openly on his desk, ticking softly as if beckoning him closer with each second. That couldn't be an accident. ...were stopwatches supposed to tick? Hmh, Mephisto's might. King of Time and all.

Rin picked up the little piece of magic mechanics, and realised he hadn't spared a single thought on what to do next. How did this thing work? Three sets of arms and only one button for setting the time, how did-? Hmm, maybe if he pulled it out a bit and then turned? What, no- Why did two arms move at once? And what were the weird symbols doing on the clock face in place of numbers?

" _Maybe I go back too far and meet dinosaurs?_ " was the last thought Rin had before the river of time swept him away.

* * *

The armchair Rin had sat down in did not have the same placement in this time. He landed on his butt behind it, just centimetres short of knocking down a decorative pot plant. He would've thought Mephisto had noticed the thump, but there had miraculously been another noise to cover for him: that of a door opening.

"Evening, Cuddlebun."

Evening _what?_ What was his old man saying? And to _Mephisto_? No, his dad had plenty of romantic books with big-breasted women. He was straight as an arrow. It was _Mephisto_ who had kissed him at the convention, just to prank him, and there was _no way_ it was anything more than a prank. Mephisto liked smoking hot temptresses, he'd learnt that his very first day in the Academy.

Doing two things at a time was not one of Rin's specialties. Processing the disturbing nickname had let him miss most of the conversation that followed, but the metallic shriek effectively jolted him out of his thoughts. Peeking around the heavy piece of furniture, he spotted the old man down on his haunches and chatting casually with Mephisto's waste bin.

" _Dad, you sure are weird._ "

"Eat this and be quiet." He fed some crumpled paper to the wastebin, like it was a pet.

"When do I get treats for being a good demon?"

Rin had to scoot over and peek past the other side of the chair to get a view of Mephisto. Was it just his imagination, or had there been some insinuation in that statement…?

"I can toss trash at you too, if you like."

Rin grinned, and grabbed hold of his tail to keep it from wagging without his knowledge. He had never really been able to picture Mephisto and his old man being friends: now, he understood completely.

"I cut my hair today-"

"With marginal improvement."

"Compliment duly noted."

Rin sat _trembling_ with laughter behind the chair. No way that Mephisto had nagged his _dad_ about proper hairstyle, too!

" _Some things really never change, huh?_ "

…What followed next was a little bit odd. Sure, he hadn't followed the whole conversation, but it seemed something had happened with the old man's hair. Mephisto was having a look at it, and…

Well, that's all it was, right? The old man had noticed something off, asked his friend about it, and Mephisto checked on it. Rin would do the same if Bon asked if something was off with his piercings.

…So why did he have this odd feeling that something more was going on? He had always trusted his gut feeling about things, but right _now_ he… he wasn't sure what his gut was telling him. Or why the feeling intensified when Mephisto moved his fingers from the old man's hair and tilted his chin up towards him.

" _Okay, stop it brain, I did_ not _need_ _an overlapping picture from shoujo manga right now_ ", he groaned inwardly. " _I'm just imagining stuff because of that weird nickname. Yeah._ " And missing more of what was said.

"A shock of that magnitude could definitely be traumatic enough to make your hair turn white prematurely."

"So it's always gonna be like this…?"

"Yes – unless you dye it."

"Why would I? Saves me the trouble of bleaching it once a month." All of a sudden, the old man burst out laughing. Rin thought he'd missed something again, but then so apparently had Mephisto. "Fufufufu well~ I figured you'd give me grey hairs one day", teenage-Fujimoto said, stroking his chin and pulling a crooked grin to go with the gesture. "Just didn't think it would be this soon."

So he _had_ had that hair forever? Wow. He learnt so many things about his dad even without asking him.

"I always did wonder why you bleach your hair, though. Initially, I thought it was because of your name."

"Seriously? What kind of idiot would dye his hair to fit his name?"

Oh, that was it. That, was it: Rin would have to bite into something or he would laugh so they heard him. What kind of idiot? One like Kinzo Shima?

" _I wonder if dad ever told him that in school? He must've had Kinzo in his class, right? Whoa, and he must've had Mamushi and Juuzo and, and…! Damn, so many things I want to ask about! I should make a list. Yeah, I should do that, or I'll forget something._ "

"…Is this some new weird game of yours? Mirroring my movements like that?"

Good thing the old man was puzzled by it, too, 'cause Rin sure was. Mephisto really had always acted strange…

"There's an interesting expression passing over your features when I do – too brief to be properly studied, but nonetheless noticeable. Does my proximity make you _edgy_ , Shiro-pon~?" Yep. The clown _was_ insinuating things.

"Don't know if 'edgy' is the right thing to call it… What would you suggest, prince of words and wit?"

" _What? What wha… WHAAAAT?_ " What was the old man doing? Why did he sound so creepy? Why did he _stroke Mephisto's hair?_

"Playing along, all of a sudden? To what end, I wonder~?"

"Wanna find out…? Then play the game~"

Rin did _not_ want to find out, but at the same time he did, 'cause he couldn't believe the old man had had a thing for men. He had only ever talked about beautiful women, with that silly kind of face that made Rin emphasize to people that he was adopted.

"I could lose my job for that."

"Only if they find out. There's many things you've done that the Order doesn't know of, right? Something minor like this…"

So why was the old man unbuttoning Mephisto's tailcoa- And _why_ as Mephisto pulling him closer, and yanking his tie off, and-?!

Rin's jaw hit the floor when he old man slipped the tailcoat off the principal and _leaned in to-_

…and then, Rin learnt that Mephisto was ticklish: something his old man had discovered decades earlier.

He also learnt that the little panda-shaped waste bin might be more intelligent than he'd given it credit for. It struck the old man square in the back and floored him; and then his brain made another unasked-for overlapping with shoujo manga.

" _Do they realise what this looks like…?_ " When they were sprawled on the floor on top of each other like that?

"Now, would you mind letting me go, so you can plot your gloriously sweet revenge in private…?"

"Sweet it will be, rest assured of that~" *poof* Mephisto rose to his feet smoothly, dusted off his clothes, and gave the waste bin a generous reward of candy wrappings. "But I'm not quite in private, am I?"

Eep…! Rin had completely forgotten that Mephisto had probably heard him. He surfaced from behind the armchair with a sheepish smile and his tail swishing nervously back and forth.

"You again?"

"Again?" Rin blinked. "You recognise me?"

"Of course: my future self dropped in with you and your brother in my office not long ago. Which makes me wonder", he drawled, eyes narrowing, "why you come here unsupervised now."

"Just hold it a minute." Rin held his hands up to halt further speech: he needed focus now, 'cause something here was fishy. "Mephisto said that when you go to the past everyone who meets you soon forget it again. Like you're just a dream or something. So how can _you_ remember me?"

"I'm the ruler of time: I may not write its laws, but I stand above most of them. Now, back to the question of importance: why are you here with my watch, without the future me?"

"Uh, future-you let me borrow it. He was busy, so he couldn't come along", Rin floundered ahead. "Yeah, he had to… go to some important meeting, but he'd promised me we could go back and see dad again, so he gave me the stopwatch to-"

The stopwatch was no longer in his hand, but in past-Mephisto's.

"I suppose it's a testament to how well Shiro raised you that you lack every prerequisite for telling credible lies." The smile that spread on the clown's lips made Rin feel suddenly very uncomfortable. "So~ he's your dad, is he? Not your biological one, with those blue eyes of yours. Adoptive father, then. Who dies prematurely about thirty-two years from now – and violently so, if I'm any judge of things." To Rin's surprise, there was a sudden twitch of annoyance in the clown's eyebrow. "Or simply from lung cancer induced by heavy smoking."

"Dad smokes?"

That was a surprise – and it instantly brightened Mephisto's mood.

"So he does quit eventually? Aah good news, good news!" He clapped his hands enthusiastically. "What else can you tell me about the future Shiro?"

Should he… be telling him things…? If he _remembered_ what he was told, maybe he could… Gaah, crap – all he knew about time travel and altering history came from manga! He should've brought Yukio along, Yukio was the one who could figure out things like these!

"I don't even know that much about him: that's why I come back to find out. Um, he grows a goatee...?"

Rin hadn't seen that face of roaring disbelief since he'd declared to present-Mephisto that he wanted to become an exorcist.

"Like mine?"

"No, messier. And it's really scratchy. So, um, could I have the stopwatch back?"

"In a moment." The principal conducted a series of twisting and pushing and drawing out of the buttons on the device. "I've reset it, so it will return to its present time automatically. That is the only place you're going", he admonished, handing the stopwatch back, "little son of Satan. Time and space are dangerous plains to traverse alone without experience."

"…Okay."

And still, before he pushed the button, he turned it slightly, slightly.

* * *

Still in the office, but no Mephisto. Thanking his lucky star, Rin searched the desk over until he spotted a calendar: June 1976. Sweet!

Finding his old man was a different question. The school corridors were empty and eerily evocative of horror films, so he assumed it was a holiday. Plenty of people moved about on campus outside, so it was probably one of those single days that gave enough time to breathe but not to go home to visit family.

" _Dad didn't have a family_ ", he reminded himself, with all the questions that followed. Had he been abandoned? Had his parents died? How? When? " _Why didn't you ever tell us anything…?_ "

He had the chance to ask him now. Just had to find the old fart. It was no easy thing, given how big the campus was. He might as well start at the only place he was sure his dad frequented a lot: his dorm.

The Academy didn't look that different thirty years ago. Go figure – you don't decide to re-lay marble floors just like that over a summer break. You could tell you were in another time by the artwork in the common rooms, the furniture and such. The vegetation was a lot different, too. Rin thought he'd gotten lost many times outside; the paths were familiar, but there were sprouts where he was used to seeing alleys of trees, and groves where there were no trees at all in the present. There was even a neglected old orchard in one place that sure wasn't there in modern time.

…And through pure luck, he spotted the old man rushing in the opposite direction up on one of the suspended walkways that ran parallel with his own.

It seemed Fujimoto Shiro was always in a hurry when he was young. Heh, maybe he even overslept and forgot meetings…? Rin couldn't help but grin as he rushed in the same direction.

" _I'm already a lot like you._ " And the grin only grew wider as he slowly caught up. " _'cept the hair. Wow, dad, you're_ exactly _like Shima now!_ " One more thing on the list of stuff to ask about: why had he dyed his hair pink?

Exactly like Shima. _Exactly_ like Shima, so much that Rin had to slow his pace to a jog to laugh properly when he saw where the old man's breakneck run was taking him. She was _really_ cute, though, the girl waiting for him on the bridge. Really small, but with huge boobs.

" _Kinda like Shiemi._ " Wow, they even had the same taste in girls? " _We would've had so much to talk about, dad._ "

"Nice hair ye've got, Shiro-kun!"

"…Yeah, Mephisto thought so too."

Rin flopped down on a bench at appropriate distance and just grinned so his cheeks hurt. So the clown was behind this one…? Really, no wonder they got along.

" _No way – she's gonna beat him up, too…?_ "

No, they were just sparring. …and he really wanted to learn staff techniques now. Could he apply for that in present time? It looked so cool!

…Was it okay to stalk your dad on his date? Rin was a little conflicted, but kept the couple in his sights. It wasn't like he was stalking them for some pervy reasons, right? Just wanted to be sure he wouldn't miss the opportunity to catch the old man and ask all those questions. And find out more about his dad's hot date. Maybe it was someone he'd heard of – maybe she was still in the Order? He could find her in the present, maybe ask more about his dad…

" _Crap. Busted._ "

The couple disappeared down the dim path through the bamboo forest; and trotting out of it from the side, a small white dog came to sit in his way.

"Well, it seems like the settings were a bit off, so I didn't get all the way back, but, uh, maybe you can fix that…?"

…The dog was not impressed.

"The settings aren't the problem so much as the fact that you repossessed the stopwatch in the first place. I left it on the desk to see whether you were as reckless as Shiro: and you are, indeed, just like him."

"Yeah", he grinned brightly, "I am. So you're gonna take us back to the present now, or…?"

Instead of replying, Mephisto assumed his humanoid form with a poof.

"I don't mind you taking after Shiro." He collected the stopwatch from Rin. "He was a formidable exorcist, but he was also human; and humans are flawed creatures." He began turning and pushing buttons on the device, bored green eyes surveying the process idly. "Recklessness was the greatest one in him. He did many an irresponsible thing, and pulled them off through pure chance." The device was set, and the green eyes left it for Rin's. "Lady Chance is a faithless mistress, not suitable for an exorcist. If you wish to one day surpass your adoptive father, you would do well to learn from his mistakes as well as your own."

…Rin had been too busy trying to get out something stuck in his ear, and hadn't paid any attention at all.

" _Dear boy, you have a long way to walk before you can truly compare yourself to Shiro._ " He let out a dismal sigh at the task before him. "Well, then: it's about time we headed back."

* * *

Seeing as the stopwatch transported them through time but not space, they reappeared in the same bamboo forest. Good: because Rin still had unanswered questions.

"Um, would you mind if we walked back? A little bit, at least?" he asked when he saw Mephisto about to snap his fingers. "I didn't get the chance to speak with dad even with the stopwatch, so, um…"

"Say no more, say no more; walk we will."

It rattles you more than you imagine it will. Time.

They walked back over the same bridge he'd seen his dad cross, but repainted and repaired and fitted with a railing of simple iron instead of the painted, wooden ones in the past. Rin was not yet old enough to have seen the world change and shed his memories of it like yesteryear's leaves… but he could imagine the feeling. That everything was transient. That nothing lasted in the river of time. That all you could really do was store your treasures away in memory and let the torrent carry you along.

"Who was she?" he began, as they walked past the place where the busty girl had sat on the railing. "The girl dad dated? She seemed pretty... feisty."

"Shiro liked his women that way. That was Honda Kasumi, a wandering pilgrim and exorcist of the Buddhist tradition."

Crap, such a common name… If she even had the same name. The old man had never been married, that much he knew, but she probably had been.

"Is she… still around?"

"She's still alive, if that's what you're asking."

"Where?" he asked, ears perking up.

"Anywhere and everywhere", Mephisto smiled. "Her people drift with the wind like dandelion seeds that never take root."

End of trail, then: unless that Lady Chance was as good to him as she had been to the old man. Speaking of which:

"Hey, Mephisto… You and dad were pretty close, right?"

He didn't look at Mephisto, but focused on not missing the stairs with his feet. The Academy had a lot of stairs, but you only really noticed when you were going uphill.

"Yes – anything particular you would like to know about him, so that you don't feel tempted to borrow my stopwatch again?"

"Sorry 'bout that. But I would like to know… something." Something that had been eating him since the scene he'd accidentally witnessed in the office. "Did you… How did you feel about dad?"

Ah crap, he wouldn't feel so awkward about this normally: but normally, this wasn't about his dad, or his principal, or the two of them… together.

"I know it's a kind of personal question, but when I saw you two in the past, I got this feeling that you… that you…" Rin shook his head as if that would make his words come out less jumbled. "That maybe you saw him as more than a friend. Sorry, maybe it's just a stupid thought I had…"

He didn't laugh at him, at least. Rin had half by half expected that he would - that seemed to be his usual reaction to irrational suggestions, like the son of Satan becoming an exorcist. But Mephisto merely quirked his lips up, and gave him that sideways glance that held all answers but would only surrender a morsel.

"Shiro was a prankster; I'm sure you remember me telling you that", he replied without missing a beat. "What you saw was nothing more than a harmless game."

" _For dad it was_ ", he thought, eyebrows furrowed together as he tried to translate that vague gut feeling into words. " _You seemed like you'd wanted to play that game all the way._ " Should he really _say_ that…? "Yeah, you seemed to have a lot of fun together." No, he shouldn't. Gut feeling.

Rin winced at the high-pitched anime voice that announced there had come a message, and a cluster of phone accessories jingled as Mephisto brought the garish pink cell out of his pocket. Rin couldn't see what was on the screen, only watch the principal's thin eyebrows rise over bored eyes.

"I swear that boy puts himself in trouble only to gain my attention", he grumbled and clicked the phone shut. "Urgent matters, Okumura-kun: have a pleasant day, and try not to ruin it with any rash impulses."

"Uh, sure thing. Bye, clown!"

Mephisto returned the wave, watching the boy continue up the stairs, sword sheath thumping against his back and tail swishing back and forth. No manners. No manners at all.

" _Just like you._ "

He turned his hand, watching the cluster of assorted phone accessories fan out over the back of it. Six charms. Six mementos from Shiro…

" _Some things belong in the past; I'm sure you would agree with me in that, little lion._ "

…and a seventh that no one would ever know of.


	17. Concerning the Bible (Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might deserve the darkest pits of hell for that title in this context, but it's honestly a pun that begs to be made. I blame **Fox Populi** for giving me this idea in the first place.
> 
>  **WARNING:** Biblical writings might become forever ruined for you. Not my fault, though. This is on the original authors' consciences. All I do is provide the linguistic background.
> 
> Relates slightly to **Inferno ch 68.**

Shiro wasn't required to have read the whole Bible before being baptized, but figured that it couldn't hurt to do it. Cram school had turned him into a very diligent student, with a keen understanding for what key tidbits of information you might miss if you relied on summaries and didn't study the source material.

…Then again, summaries are made because the source material often contains quite the amount of confusing and downright irrelevant passages.

"This, does not make one shit of sense." Shiro closed the Bible around his thumb, and turned it so Samael could see the cover. "This book. What the hell was wrong with people back then?"

One could say... many things, of Samael. Among the more flattering ones was that he was very old, and very educated, and - seeing as Irony is the fuel of the universe - knew the Bible better than any Christian scholar.

"Are you implying that humans are any more knowledgeable today?" Samael cast one eye at the Holy Scriptures from where he lounged on his divan, and returned to his far more interesting manga volume. "You need to read its contents as analogies and symbols, Shiro: focus on the message, not the envelope it's delivered in."

"I get that, but it's not pillars of flame and instant-cloning of fish I'm talking about. Listen to this: 'And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where _was_ a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.' Just… what? What's this even about? Saul had been walking all day with his men and suddenly realises 'holy crap, I've got feet, I can't let anybody see this horrible deformity!' and rushes into a cave?"

"And that, dear boy, is why you don't read the Bible as the literal truth", he snorted with laughter. "Humans were just as prudish back then as you are now. To speak of a 'foot' among the Hebrew was an euphemistic way of speaking of a person's genitals; to speak of covering one's feet meant to relieve oneself." He chuckled and turned another page. "I wonder if that's the origin of the saying that men with big feet are well endowed?"

"I wonder if that's the reason you add a few centimetres to the toes of your boots?" Shiro shot the gaudy, cerise garments a meaningful look. "And that ridiculously long car – compensating for something…?"

"Are you content to wonder, or would you rather _know_?"

Samael would've doubled over if he hadn't been lying down, and kept snickering so much he couldn't down a single sip of his tea.

"Guess two times", Shiro stated flatly and went back to his Bible.

"…You don't even get the pun, do you?" he deadpanned. And immediately set to amending that. "There's more words than 'foot' hiding double entendre meanings in the Holy Book. Hebrew has two words for 'know': one for human beings, and one for objects. The latter had a quite different meaning when used between people, as you ought to be able to guess from lines like 'Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived'."

"Oh…" Yep. Certain passages suddenly made a lot more sense. "Yeah, I think I will read the Bible in a slightly different light now. Jesus…" He was laughing before he could even check himself. "Ahahaaa 'learn to know Christ and follow him!' Like the priest said at my- Oh god, church will never be the same… Why did it have to be such a common word as 'know'? And 'foot' isn't ever gonna- Hold on, there's that thing Isaiah said… about Seraphim, just gimme a moment…"

Shiro leafed briskly through the frail, all but translucent pages of the book. No wonder Arias had to know their stuff by heart – good luck finding the right verses in that with demons chewing at your boots.

"Here: 'each had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.' Is that the _same_ kind of covering fe-" Shiro's brow furrowed, and he went to read the passage again. "Plural. Alright, that probably is their feet, then. Unless Seraphim have two of the other thing", he chuckled.

"Kuhuhu how would that look? No, they have one of each."

"Hm? One of each of what?"

"Feet. The Biblical kind", Samael smirked lewdly, in case it wasn't clear to Shiro which kind of feet they were talking about. "Angels don't have two, but one of each kind."

"What? How would that-?"

Imagination is mankind's greatest asset and weapon against demons. Like all weapons, it can be used against them.

"Why is my brain doing this to me? Why won't the images stop?" Oh there was another one, oh god, he hadn't seen this much mental agony since he'd discovered Samael's garter belts. "Hermaphrodite angels… like bloody slugs…"

"Ew, of all the things you could pick for comparison." At least he wasn't the only one grossed out. "Mind your mouth, young man: next time I'm compared to a slug I'll turn you into one."

"I'm talking about _angels_ , not _you_." He hadn't yet found an animal that Samael could be compared to. Didn't want to insult the slugs.

"Haah, Christians; no more knowledgeable today than two millennia ago. Angel and demon are just words – labels given by humans to beings beyond their understanding."

He rose like a wisp of smoke, performing one of his ludicrous flourishing monologues as he strode across the thick Persian carpet.

"Did you ever wonder why there is an angel by the same name as I? Why the legends in the scriptures speak of angels that 'turned wicked' and became demons?" A furtive smirk graced his lips as he came to a stop before Shiro. "Humans want things to believe in, two thousand years ago as well as now: they want demons to blame for the evil in the world, and angels to hope someone will save them from it. And we", he purred, smile widening, "give humans what they want. We've been cursed and worshipped by you for as long as man has lived on earth, under different names in different times: angels, demons, _gods_."

…Wonderful speech. Did not erase any of the images in Shiro's mind.

"…And you're hermaphrodites?" he deadpanned.

"We're spirits: we aren't limited to a single physical form." And Samael smugged him with the broadest grin he could muster. "Anything else you would like to _know_ ~?"

"No. No, I'm fine."

His brain would never be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is why I think the Muslims did right in saying the Quran should never be translated. Translation infallibly messes things up. Nuances are lost, hints and subtleties are butchered, and any reader who isn't familiar with double entendres in the original language will miss the point of things like "foot". Now, I'm not an art historian, but when I see classical paintings of Seraphim and they hold one pair of wings to cover their feet, I can't help but think that it might not have been those feet the scriptures meant; but the painter didn't know Hebrew.
> 
> …And I couldn't keep my face straight when I wrote chapter 68 and the Church manual actually recommends the priest to say "Learn to know Christ and follow him." xD Church people, of all people, must be aware how wrong that sounds in a Biblical context! Ever heard the expression "know someone in the Biblical sense"? Well. Now you know. *drum roll* (It cannot be unseen, much less avoided. x'D)


	18. Concerning further interpretations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to the chapter before, because **Fox Populi.**

Few proper Catholics ever drew the parallel between a confessional and a toilet – or at least Shiro assumed they didn't: Catholics were rather uptight about such things. Nonetheless, the parallels _were_ there. You went to confession to rid yourself of your (spiritual) waste, either because you hadn't gone for a while or because you felt an urgent need, and you left it feeling (spiritually) relieved.

He never voiced those musings during confession, of course. He did try to leave honest confessions, though. Most of the time it only concerned not having the time to pray every day, or using God's name in vain, or having sinful thoughts about particularly hot girls – and, of course, engaging in social activity with a demon.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four days since my last confession. These are my sins." He cleared his throat of the familiar dusty air in the confessional, and continued: "I've had sinful thoughts – I think."

"Are you not sure what thoughts count as sinful, or why would you say that, child?"

"No, I know they're sinful; I just don't know if they're really _mine_. It's not like I _want_ to think them. A demon put them in my head, and since then I can't get them out."

"Always beware the words of the Devil's lackeys, my son, and pray that He will protect you from their harm."

"I know. It's just kinda… hard _not_ to listen to him, since he's my Italian teacher."

"…Is this your headmaster we're talking about again?"

All priests in the parish knew of his special relations with Samael by now. It was tolerated as a necessity, although many were of the opinion that it was no suitable connection to have.

"It's the only demon I'm not allowed to exorcise, so yeah."

An exasperated sigh wheezed through the latticework that separated the two compartments of the confessional.

"I've said it-"

"I know, I know: you've pleaded for his excommunication a number of times. Don't waste your breath."

"It seems it's nothing but a waste of breath, yes…" Another sigh, and the wooden seat creaked softly as the priest adjusted himself on it. "I'm sorry for the interruption: what thoughts did the demon put in your head?"

There are some things you really don't do. Most would agree that lying during confession is one such thing: it's a far less common occurrence to ask a demon for advice about the Bible, but many would say that is no suitable thing to do either.

So… pick your poison.

"I… asked him a few things, about… the Bible, and-" There was a sound from the other side that might have been a reflexive 'Lord preserve us', but Father Igarashi was professional enough not to interrupt him mid-sentence. "I asked him, because there were translated expressions I didn't understand, and he kinda speaks all those dead Biblical languages. He explained what 'foot' could mean in Hebrew, other than an actual foot." Shiro screwed his eyes shut against the assaulting images and pinched the base of his nose. Neither method helped. "And now I can't think about Christ washing the feet of his disciples without thinking of the other Hebrew feet. And then he tells them they should all wash each other's feet. I don't know, it just… gets very wrong."

"I see. …If this is all, you may pray your Act of Contrition."

Akin to flushing – which he didn't say out loud, no. In the privacy of the dark confessional, Shiro nodded, and drew upon his memory the way he did when chanting verses as Aria:

"My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In his name, my God, have mercy."

"God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Father Igarashi cleared his throat. "For penance, say one Pater Noster, and eleven Ave Maria."

"I will. Thank you, Father."

"Fujimoto-kun?" the priest said, as Shiro was about to leave the toil- the confessional.

"Yes, Father?"

"Say them before Sir Pheles, that he may also perform penance for his sins."

"I will, Father", he grinned.


	19. Concerning your teeth, Sir Pheles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **"Do you think that demons are able to get caries?"**
> 
> I'm so glad that you asked, **Zeitfliege**. x9 I hope this answers your question.
> 
> If Mephisto were a real person I would probably grade him a "poor prognosis patient", but hell it can't hurt to try. Prepare for a glorified lesson in dental hygiene.

"...WHAT?"

Mephisto Pheles did receive summons for regular health checks, as was the standard for every employee under the Order's banner. He never harboured any intention to answer them, nor did he have any need for them. His body - infused as it was with his vast demonic energy - could eliminate any bacteria or virus within a week, dispel toxins within the hour, and instantly remedy injuries that would have been fatal to a human. His superiors knew this, and he kept telling them, but since somebody somewhere in the bureaucracy made a living off putting paper slips in envelopes the summons for health checks kept being delivered to his mail compartment. It was... a mild annoyance.

This was different. This was _outrageous_.

He had resolved to show up for check-up at least once to - hopefully - explain the situation to the medical personnel so that maybe _they_ could do something about the mail bombing.

It had not gone according to plan.

The chair was incredibly uncomfortable, for one thing. No matter how the neck rest was extended he was too tall to rest comfortably against it, the whole room _stank_ of medical alcohol, the lamp light stabbed his eyes no matter how the dentist adjusted it, and what the dastardly little creature had just _said...!_

"You have caries, Sir Pheles", ze repeated and pulled the surgical mask down in case zir patient misheard zir a second time. "It means you have holes. One manifest lesion on the distal surface of the second premolar, here." Ze pointed a finger gloved in plastic at the x-ray images on the computer screen, where the milky white teeth had som quite big and quite dark blotches eating into them. "And one on the mesial surface of the first molar right behind it. We're going to need to open the cavities up and excavate the afflicted tissue, and then-"

"Just a moment Mx-uh-Imwitt", he urged after a quick glance at the name tag clipped to the dentist's deep blue hospital tunic. _D. Imwitt_. One of those international transfers that always got the staff self-conscious about their English. "I believe there must have been some mistake. I'm the director of the Japanese branch-"

"Mephisto Pheles, Sir; no date of birth, no social security number, and a spotless record of unbooking check-ups for the past eighty years." Imwitt gave him a lazy smile and pushed zir round glasses up in a way _eerily_ reminiscent of how Shiro had always done it. "I don't think there's any possibility of mistaking you for another patient, Sir."

"My reputation reaches far and wide - and furthermore, it should mean you are aware that I can't develop caries."

Imwitt's eyebrows rose in a patient manner, as if asking him to kindly elaborate what he meant by that; even though it would be uneducated rubbish.

Sir Pheles didn't mind being regarded as an idiot if that gained him the advantage of underestimation. In this context it didn't. In this context he was degraded to an obtuse patient by an ignorant immigrant who barely reached him past the elbow.

"I'm a demon", he explained paedagogically, the way you do with small children. "My immune system is a hundred times more efficient than yours. I can regenerate any tissue in my body within minutes. I do not develop caries."

"Your immune system doesn't have access to your teeth, Sir Pheles", Imwitt replied just as paedagogically, and inspired him with a seething wish to choke zir. "Dentine and enamel have no turnover, like bone or muscle or connective tissue. You can't regenerate without cells to do the repair work, and there are no cells in your teeth that can repair damage to enamel and dentin."

"There shouldn't be any damage to them in the first place: my body would attack bacteria before they can harm my teeth."

"The bacteria don't harm your teeth, Sir Pheles: they have no interest in your teeth at all. They live in harmony with your mouth and only protect themselves against sudden spikes in glucose concentration." Imwitt rolled zir  chair over to a table with pamphlets, tugging zir plastic gloves off as ze did so. "High levels of sugar is toxic to the oral bacteria. When you eat or drink something sweet they protect themselves by rapidly converting the excess sugar into lactate - bacteria poop, if you will - which unfortunately is acidic enough to dissolve tooth tissue." The dentist returned with a pamphlet bearing an illustration of what happens in the mouth with the introduction of food and drink. "Since the bacteria never attack you, your immune system won't do squat to fight them."

Putting the pamphlet away and running zir hand through a feral mohawk, Imwitt sighed, leaned forward in zir chair and let zir clasped hands hang between zir knees.

"Look, after I've gotten rid of the cariated tissue and sealed those teeth for you, the rest is up to you. If you cut down on the sugar we won't have to do this again; if you don't I'll be replacing more and more of your teeth until your mouth has a higher plastic content than your figurine collection."

...Sir Pheles was quite sure he hadn't mentioned his figurine collection to Imwitt. Not that he didn't enjoy talking about it (and organizing it, and playing with it, and organizing it again), but he had never _met_ this person before - and he had only met zir so that he could tell zir he didn't want to meet zir again. _Definitely_ didn't want to meet zir again. _Bacteria poop? Cut down on sugar...?!_

"I'd also advise you to cut down on snacking in between meals", ze continued through his bemused silence, pushing zir glasses up again. "Every time you put something in your mouth the bacteria react by converting glucose to lactate, the pH drops and your teeth will be in for an acid attack. Be especially mindful of snacking when you pull all-nighters reading manga or playing _Final Fantasy_." Imwitt levelled a meaningful look at him. "The saliva contains minerals and proteins that make it alkaline, to combat the acid from the bacteria, but saliva production has an ebb-and-tide cycle: high during daylight hours and low during night hours. Meaning", ze concluded with a short pause for emphasis, "that the mouth has less saliva at night and can't protect the teeth from a food-induced acid attack."

How did ze...? They had never met, they had never spoken, so _how_ did ze...? Imwitt's lips stretched into a smile - and it would have been a charming smile, too, if not for the wicked glow in zir eyes.

"We'll talk more about lifestyle changes later: first thing on the list is to take care of the problem right here and now and fix those teeth for you." That said, Imwitt tugged her surgical mask back up - with some difficulty getting it in under the lenses of zir glasses - and wormed zir hands into a sterile pair of gloves. Ze then began to assemble the syringe with practiced ease. "I've never had to anaesthesise a demon before. Wonder how many shots this will take...?"

Though the surgical mask hid both face and nose from view, Sir Pheles could tell ze was grinning wide.

Dentists shouldn't be allowed to enjoy their job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you ever pay a visit to the Odontological university in Malmö, Sweden, and get somebody to log you in on Romexis (the computer system for x-ray images), you can find the profile of a Sir Mephisto Pheles among the practice patients. I regret nothing.


	20. Concerning that dentist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **"How does she know? Howdoessheknow?!"**
> 
> So this is a sequel to the previous chapter, in response to **Midorchi-chan's** wondering. =P (And dude, the fanart is so cute! Thank you!)

"Alright, what's going on?"

There had been no furniture towers in sight. There had been no floors falling away, no dimensional directions warping, and no black smoke coming from anywhere. And that plain freaked Shiro out.

When he had been called up from his office to talk sense into his employer he had expected the usual: chaos. Whenever Mephisto went out of control, the result was chaos. That was the one and only time Mephisto – or chaos itself – was predictable.

The brisk walk through Faust Mansion had been like walking through a horror movie; one of those where the atmosphere builds tension and silently screams at you that things are _disturbingly normal_ , and that something must jump out from a dark corner very soon.

Thus, Shiro had every right to wonder what was going on once he reached the final destination of his journey. Which was no less disturbing than the journey itself.

The room Mephisto had encased himself in had tinfoil draped over every square centimetre of its surface: walls, floor, ceiling; _all_ of it, even the windows – if there even were windows in there. Mephisto himself was wrapped in a thick, fuzzy blanket and huddled up in his favourite beanbag, with a bookshelf of manga to one side and a mountain of assorted fruit on the other. There was also a minor drugstore of painkillers sticking up from a pink, rabbit-patterned cookie jar.

"Empty your pockets in the tray, please."

…And Shiro had to pass through a metal detector to get in. The device had beeped furiously – which might have something to do with a loaded handgun – and Mephisto had reacted by snapping his fingers without looking up from his book. There now hovered an expectant plastic tray next to Shiro, who merely swatted it aside and strode in.

"Want me to conduct a strip search on you instead?"

"Sure, if it will make you snap out of this crap."

Yep. That made the old goat forget all about his manga, and the orange he was eating, and give his undivided attention to Shiro.

"Are you se-"

"Of course I'm not serious, dumbass." He threw his arms out at the room – _bunker_ – around them and watched his distorted reflection toss the motion back at him from the tinfoil wallpaper. "What is all this? You taking an apprenticeship with *Stridsberg?" Mephisto mumbled something. It didn't sound like 'Stridsberg', or even like a word. "Hm?"

"Imwitt." Something… _haunted_ entered Mephisto's eyes when he said it, and he made what seemed like a reflexive reach towards the jar of painkillers and the near-empty bottle of water next to them. "Ze knows. Ze's watching me. Somehow. _Some_ how."

…Right. Mephisto was paranoid that some Imwitt person was spying on him. It made about as much sense as everything else the lunatic did when he got an Idea into his head, and it sure explained the tinfoil bunker, but not Mephisto's unusual consumption of fruit and… was that bottle filled with water or was it filled with mouthwash?

"I don't get it. Don't you usually like having fans?"

"Ze's not a fan, Ze's a stalker! Ze knew about my anime toy collection and what video games I play!"

Shiro had to run that through his head twice, but still came up with no explanation for how that would make Mephisto look this winded. Or chew that manically on his last orange wedge.

"… _That's_ what you've been freaking out about? Oh for the love of- Look, ze probably read that in some stupid interview you made for a girls' magazine. You don't have any stalker."

"I thought so too, but when I left the clinic ze said 'See you around, Cuddle-bun'! No one has ever called me that except y-"

Enlightenment had practiced long and hard to synchronise a simultaneous dual realisation, and in that moment said realisation dawned beautifully on both Shiro and Mephisto.

"YOU told zir!" And he pointed with his whole arm, too.

"Nope, didn't." Shiro was having fun. Oh yes dammit he was having fun.

"Of course you did, don't play dumb! You're working together to prank me! I've unveiled your master plan to stop me from eating sweets!"

Shiro just snickered at the yelling demon, rubbed his fingers over his chin and looked like he enjoyed the situation very much.

"Let me guess: the clinic where you met this Imwitt chick was a dentistry clinic?"

"You know full well it wa-"

But how had Shiro known that he would go to _that_ dentist? How had Shiro known that he would go to the dentist _at all_? He hadn't been on a medical check-up _ever_ , not since they started sending him summons and not before that either.

Shiro _seemed_ to know. Shiro's smug, shit-eating I-couldn't-be-more-pleased- _grin_ seemed to know a lot more than it said.

"You're supposed to be smart, you know", he drawled cheerfully and crossed his arms. "Think: dentist, round glasses, bleached mohawk, knows everything you and I do, goes by the name D. Imwitt - or so I'm guessing. That description should ring a bell."

It did.

The demon's eyes widened, and then grew ominously narrow.

"And before you poof yourself over there to intimidate zir", Shiro spoke up as soon as Mephisto had positioned his fingers to snap them, "ze already knows you're coming. So you won't be able to catch zir – or ze might have set up a trap for you. Personally I'm hoping it's the latter", he finished with a mean grin.

Mephisto's fingers remained still and un-snapped for a long time. All the while, he calculated possible ways of second-guessing and intercepting Dimwit.

…And after an even longer time, he snatched a plum from the fruit pile and took a vicious bite out of it.

"Aww not even gonna try~?" Shiro teased and cocked his head to the side.

"Not yet. A high-profile game like this calls for a very elaborate strategy before I make my move."

"Declaring war on our author is essentially like declaring war on god, you know." Shiro followed suit and selected a pear from the pile. "You actually believe you can outsmart god?"

"I can, and I will." Yep. The vicious glow in Mephisto's eyes said it all: the game was on. "It's only a matter of figuring out how."

"If we hooked you up to the power grid your confidence could keep all of Japan running for decades. Sure, you entertain yourself with tricking god: might keep you busy long enough that I'll be retired from service before I get called in to smack some sense into you again. Meanwhile", he said, swallowing a juicy mouthful of pear, "all this fruit…?"

"Substitution", was the snappy reply. "The meddling little pest told me I must reduce my sugar intake or else I'll have more cavities, and I do _not_ want to sit in that damnable chair again." Or meet with Dimwit, unless it was on his terms.

Clearly, the substitution wasn't doing its job: right after he had said that, Mephisto downed _nine_ painkillers in a single gulp. And that wasn't even the most shocking thing about his confession.

" _More_ cavities?" Shiro blinked, completely forgetting about his pear. "You've got _cavities_? Can demons even get that?"

"I'm not going to discuss that – and since these safety measures are useless I might as well scrap them and go back to the usual routine."

Getting Mephisto back to work on proper schedule: mission complete. For a while. The peace and order wouldn't last for long, because there was one other thing Shiro had to tell his old friend before he could consider his work done:

"You do know that fruit is mostly sugar, right?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * I imagine Shiro to be in his mid-twenties here, which means this is a bit ahead in the future and he has met a few characters that haven't appeared in TEotB yet. =P One could consider this a teaser introduction of J. Stridsberg?


	21. Concerning different kinds of demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a birthday present to my Beta reader. xD

Ahhh, winter: his favourite season.

Those who had had the opportunity to observe Mephisto closely over time might have pointed out to him that he said every season was his favourite, but that was simply because it was true. Summer, autumn, winter, spring – each had its own particular joys and wonders, and no matter how long he had been in Assiah he never ceased to rejoice in her many different garbs. December had several most agreeable qualities, too. It was the month loved by all children (and those with the minds of children, as one particularly annoying observer liked to point out) in Christian countries, and in countries subject to the cultural invasion of the United States. It was the month most rich in food, sweets, games, and gifts; Mephisto was enjoying the first three immensely, and was anticipating the fourth bouncing with excitement.

December was also the month when the sun grew weak and weary until it didn't climb over the horizon before noon, and once done quickly sank down below it again. This, in combination with the food, sweets and games, nurtured Mephisto's habit of pulling all-nighters to a virtually lethal degree. Alas, he still managed to be at his desk on time, and his regenerative abilities kept his body functional and in one piece. A gentleman always made an impeccable impression.

The same could not be said of the exorcist that arrived in his office that afternoon to leave report.

Mephisto was good at making people do what he wanted: that was the main reason he was so _incredibly_ annoyed that Shiro, despite years of persuasion, persisted in wearing his uniform with rolled sleeves and slovenly tie. The other reason was that Shiro would have looked really handsome if he had just put in the effort of wearing decent clothing. On second thought, Mephisto couldn't quite decide which was the main reason and which was the secondary one, or if maybe they were equal sources of frustration.

"Goodness sake, Shiro, that's disgusting." He summoned a box of paper tissue with a snap of his fingers. "If you're having a stroke I'm sending you off to the hospital before you can vomit on my carpet."

Shiro himself didn't seem to be aware that he had a steady drip of saliva from the corner of his mouth, not until he had touched it with his fingers. He pulled out a tissue with an annoyed grunt and wiped his chin. As if possessing a sixth sense, the panda trash can bounced out from underneath the headmaster's desk with an expectant squeak.

"The only reason I'd get a stroke this young is if I had to listen to your whining for more than a day. And don't look so happy you little pest. I can't eat till this shit wears off so you're not getting any food either." And with that, he stuffed the tissue ball into his coat pocket. "I've been to the dentist", he grumbled, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in case there was any drool that he had missed. And to check that his face was still there. "I said we could do the scaling without anaesthesia but ze would have none of it. Still can't feel my lip."

Imwitt had said other things, too – about smoking and what that did to one's teeth. He still had the brochure on periodontitis in his pocket. Ze had explained that the tobacco inhibited the cells of his immune system and allowed bacterial infection to run rampant in the pockets of his gums – and, lately, in his jaw bone. That… had been an unpleasant surprise. To say the least. Imwitt had shown him his x-ray photos and explained that the inflammation had reached so deep into the gums that it had begun to dissolve the bone underneath, which was clearly visible where the contour of his jaw bone had started regressing away from the crowns. Keep smoking as much as he did now and his teeth were likely to start dropping out by the time he hit fifty, ze had said.

Goddammit.

"I think ze might have pumped in some extra just to hammer home zir point." Shiro pulled a grimace that felt as if a quarter of his face was a rubber mask. "Zethinks I should quit smoking."

Oh, gifts were coming early this December~

"Well, what's the delay? Doctor's orders, Shiro-pon~"

"Uh-huh: throwing rocks in glass houses, Sir I-should-quit-snacking-every-five-minutes?"

To Mephisto's dismay, the panda was not the only one that seemed to be gifted with a sixth sense. It couldn't be coincidence that Shiro was staring straight at the desk drawer where he kept his work day storage of gummy bears and chocolate bars. The fruit regime had been doomed to fail, and had done so after a week, when he had – to his embarrassment – sleep-walked into the kitchen and "stuffed his face", as Shiro had aptly characterised the view.

"Health care personnel take into account individual backgrounds and dispositions, Shiro", he countered with an easy smile. "Demons aren't meant to abstain from temptation; a _priest,_ on the other hand…"

Mephisto always made sure to lower his voice and add a seductive undertone when he said the word priest. The effect on Shiro was only subtle on the outside, a suppressed cringe and a slight tug in the muscles around his lips; beneath the surface, Mephisto could sense the discomfort squirming in his heart.

Yes, gifts were coming early this December.

"Come on, we're in the same boat here – a little solidarity won't kill ya." Shiro ignored the chairs, as was his habit, and sat down on the edge of Mephisto's desk. He tried to put a cigarette between his lips, but gave up and let it wiggle impatiently between his fingers instead. It wouldn't have surprised him in the least if that had been her plan when she anaesthetized him. "Dimwit's harassing both of us. If this were reality ze'd get warnings, dentists aren't allowed to act like that towards their patients, but if you or I file complaints we'd just get it thrown back in our faces with interest attached. Ze thinks she can do bloody anything just 'cause ze's our author – I mean what kind of dictatorship attitude is that?"

"Oh, you know what they say: power corrupts."

Mephisto had every right to pull a smug face given his own power and level of corruption; however, there was a certain glow in his eyes, and a certain excitement about his smile, that woke a certain feeling in Shiro that his happiness concerned something else. Actually, when he thought about it, he hadn't seen Mephisto this upbeat since he had had his teeth filled with plastic. This was far from the vengeful, paranoid demon he had coaxed out of solitary confinement in tinfoil.

Shiro shifted a little on the desk and turned to look at his friend more directly. Yes, Mephisto was in a good mood; and that… set cogs turning in Shiro's head.

"You were hell-bent on outsmarting Dimwit", he said slowly, tentatively tuning in to identify what lay in his friend's heart. "Is there actually a way for us to do that?"

"No." And yet the calculating smirk on the headmaster's face didn't match the statement of surrender. He wasn't going to reveal his game straight away, however; no, he was going to make a pause for effect and treat himself to a gummy bear to reward his brilliance first. "Ze knows everything we do and everything we plan on doing: ze meddles with our choices and the course our futures take." He twirled another gummy bear between his fingers, and through the bond they shared Shiro perceived a thrumming feeling of barely contained glee that was itching to come to the surface. "Does that remind you of someone…?"

Oh yes, it did. But that didn't make sense.

"Sure, you two are alike: ze writes you, it's not like that would be any big surprise."

"Ze writes me…?" As Mephisto's glee began to surface, the wide grin grew wider still. "Shiro, you've known me for ten years and you still underestimate me like that? I appreciate a skilled opponent, but I have no intention of losing at my own game – not even against god. Dimwit writes what I want zir to write."

"You're talking bullcrap again – how could you make zir write what you want when ze writes you in the first place?" he dismissed.

" _I_ can't; but others can."

Mephisto took great care to appear human; most of the time. There were those times when he didn't, when the devil in him shone through the varnish of gentlemanly grace. It no longer made Shiro flinch when it happened. But those words, and that look on his face… they reminded him sharply of another day in this office, a day almost ten years ago when he had been invited to take part in this grand game and do something that Mephisto himself couldn't: the day Mephisto had decided to make him his puppet.

So who was it he had snared this time?

"The art of puppetry is all about collecting pawns and putting them to good use", he continued with smooth satisfaction lacing every word. "I put one in Dimwit's inner circle of confidants and ta-dah: a mole with the means to steer the direction of the story as well as pay Dimwit back for the misery ze inflicts upon us." He made a grandiose gesture to accentuate the pause, like a conductor indicating that the audience may now applaud the skill of him and his orchestra.

Shiro did not feel like applauding him. What he had just said was ingenious in its simplicity and malicious in every other aspect. Mephisto hated when outsiders meddled in his plans, yes. Mephisto would try to turn the tables and gain control of the ones that attempted to control him, yes. Power corrupts. It was enough for Shiro to have Mephisto inviting chaos into his life, he didn't need their author to add to that – _definitely_ didn't need Mephisto literally moving the pencil to write the manuscript of his life.

Shiro was snapped out of his doomsday thoughts in the most awkward manner one can interrupt doomsday thoughts: by a baby blue box of paper tissues that nudged his arm repeatedly. Apparently he had been too lost in thought to notice that he had been drooling again.

"That sounds like it would actually work." He pulled himself a tissue and wiped his chin roughly, ignoring the pleading squeaks from the panda. "Theoretically." Because although it sounded logical there were things that didn't add up. He heaved himself off the desk so he could stand and face Mephisto without having to turn his body. "Your mole can't be doing a very good job with Dimwit since your plans backfire on you all the time."

"They don't backfire _all_ the time." Mephisto immediately regretted his choice of words; Shiro could sense a backlashing feeling of displeasure. "Anyway", he continued, distracting himself with some more candy, "her primary objective is to freak Dimwit out and destabilise zir so that ze will be easier to manipulate; invading zir dreams and resetting zir alarm clock and the like. Worming into zir plot is a later objective."

Invading Dimwit's dreams? Shiro still vividly remembered the time his own dreams had been invaded, and before he knew it he was lost to a fit of raunchy sniggering. Yeah, to each what they deserved. If this infiltrator arrangement Mephisto had put in place meant that Dimwit would also get zir fair share of suffering then he could feel better about it. A little, at least.

"Did you do what I think you did? 'Cause if you sent a succubus to whisper in our dear writer's ear I just might give you chocolate on Valentine's next year."

Mephisto perked up like a dog told he was going out for a walk. Yep, it seemed like that was exactly what he had done.

"My favourite is-"

"Côte-d'Or: I know."

That made a look of mild surprise settle on his friend's features – followed by a bedroom-eyed look of silky satisfaction. He leaned forward, chin resting on folded fingers and elbows resting on his desk. No need for words there.

"Don't look at me like that, there's nothing weird about remembering what chocolate you like", Shiro huffed.

"After ten years…?"

"After ten years, yes; come on, I'm twenty-eight, I'm not senile."

"Not saying you are – only that for a romantically challenged blockhead you are surprisingly good at paying attention to little details about me and what I like." His head tilted sideways as he casually made an observation Shiro very much disliked: "Apparently Dimwit chooses to make you pay attention to that~"

"And I'm guessing your succubus mole lobbies that kind of thing for you?" he remarked dryly.

Yeah, that was another thing. Dimwit had already had a nasty habit of letting Mephisto try to get into his pants; add another pervert to push for that development and before you could say "oh fuck" he would be under Mephisto in other aspects than rank. Damn all three of them, Mephisto, mole and author – he would have to find some way to counter the mole before things could escalate to that-

"You would know; you've met her~" Mephisto revealed with a happy wink. That effectively snapped Shiro out of his thoughts.

"Who, your mole? You sent Carmilla to mess with Dimwit?"

No. Mephisto just laughed at him, laughed and shook his head.

"Know your enemy, Shiro – and choose your spies accordingly. Carmilla isn't the kind of succubus that would capture Dimwit's interest, but I think you know who is~"

Despite a persistent reputation as "demon charmer" Shiro did not know more than one succubus by name – unless one counted part-succubi – and he had only met a handful of them in his career as exorcist. He wouldn't say either of them were the type of woman Dimwit fancied. Ze liked independent women, tough women, with wicked humour and-

"You're kidding?" Not a succubus; _the_ Succubus. "You _are_ kidding me, right?" But Mephisto's smile only grew wider as pieces of the puzzle fell in place in Shiro's mind with the sound of tumbling rocks in a landslide. " _She always teased me about being girly. She always implied that I was gay, she even fucking called Mephisto my_ boyfriend _that sly little bitch…!_ "

"But very creative." Mephisto wore an exceptionally pleased grin, and Shiro suspected that he might have said those last words out loud. "And competent. What's the matter? Cat got your tongue, Shiro~?"

"No, I was just… contemplating if I should cover my apartment in tinfoil." Not that that seemed to help.

It had been a couple years since Shiro had had his reality rattled and turned inside out like this. Each time he had thought he would get used to it, eventually, but he was starting to understand that no, one could never truly get used to something like that. Even when he _knew_ that Mephisto had strings attached virtually everywhere, to think that a classmate from so many years ago...

"There's one thing I don't get, though."

During his reassessment of the world, that damned bat familiar had flown down to perch on Mephisto's shoulder, nuzzling its master's hair in an attempt to get a share of the gummy bears. Mephisto paid it no attention, only tilted his head to the side in a gesture for Shiro to elaborate.

"The only time I saw you and Fulmine talk was when she gave you a knee in the crotch."

Yes. Mephisto vividly recalled that occasion too, if the displeased shift in the atmosphere was anything to go by. The bat took advantage of this distraction to swiftly snatch the gummy bear from Mephisto's fingers. It then retreated up on the curtain pole of the high panorama windows to enjoy its snack.

"And in all these ten years you haven't once succeeded in getting me in bed: and that time you almost did-"

"We do not discuss that", he cut off sharply.

"That's my point: you've got a mole behind Dimwit's back but the story still doesn't go your way."

Rather, it seemed to go _his_ way lately. And Mephisto's sole answer to that was silence. It didn't happen often, but the few times Shiro managed to make a bull's-eye observation he knew it instantly; when he did, the demon's heart would fill with a tight-lipped, surly feeling of undeniable setback. To Shiro, it was one of the most wonderful sensations in the world.

"Oh, I see", he grinned. Yes, he would have expected as much from Fulmine. Independent, tough, and with a wicked sense of humour; the kind of woman that would never let somebody else pull her strings. "Kinda sucks for a puppeteer to have a puppet that moves on its own, heh?"

"All puppets move _partially_ on their own: that is a calculated risk", he returned snappily and shut the candy drawer with a bang before the still hungry bat could stick its snout in it. "In chess there will always be sacrifices, and if I have to lose a handful of smaller battles to win the one that matters then I will not hesitate to do so. Be sure that when the hourglass is empty and all the grains are weighed, the end result will be the one I want." There was a pregnant pause, one in which his hair curl vibrated angrily, before that last sentence reluctantly left his lips: "Even if both Dimwit and Fulmine are partial to you."

"Building up to a nice little three-front war, are you?" Shiro sniggered with a smug face. Let the old goat plot and plan until those puppet strings were twined tightly around his neck; that would teach him. Shiro must have been giddy in the head from the anaesthetics, but he was starting to feel optimistic about this. "I might not be lucky with women in this universe, but I'm lucky with the women that matter."

"Don't be too sure." A predator's grin stretched across Mephisto's face, all teeth and twisted entertainment. "They might partial to you more than they are to me, but more than anything they're partial to the two of us together." There was a golden stopwatch dangling in his bony hand; a stopwatch Shiro recognised and dreaded. "I took you to see ourselves in the parallel universes of Zeitdieb and wildkurofang long ago, remember~? Want to see what you and I are doing in the universe of my infiltrator~?"

"No." No, he didn't want to. _No._ He remembered all too clearly what kind of situations Dimwit's associates had placed them in. He remembered Fulmine's wicked grin when she had speculated what kind of "situations" he used to be in with Mephisto. He did not want to see what futures she pictured for them. " _He teamed Dimwit up with that_ beast… _?_ "

Forget having luck with women. The universe was run by women who were sadistic, perverted demons, and he couldn't even exorcise them. With Mephisto at least he knew how the bastard ticked and knew how to strike back. Besides, he liked Mephisto. In a weird way. It was-

"Goddammit Fulmine, tell Dimwit to stop using this situation to twist my thoughts in weird ways!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneak-peek introduction of another character Shiro meets in the future: Fulmine a.k.a. Succubus, the fictionalized version of Fox Populi. Who has on occasion invaded my dreams in awkward ways, and who managed a startingly accurate prediction with her fic _The morning after_. It starts with Shiro unexpectedly sleeping in and being late for his mission briefing, and on that very same day my alarm clock had set itself wrong: I woke up with 20 minutes until my patient was due for treatment (it takes 7 minutes for me to bike to school, 7 minutes to get clean clinic clothes and get changed, and ~15 minutes to get up to the clinic wing, wipe everything with surgical alcohol, flush through the burr handles, refill the water supply, get the computers started and open up patient administration). It wasn't one of my best days, but I got the patient in without too much delay. ^_^'
> 
>  **The stopwatch** began as an in-joke between me and **Zeitdieb** as a way to let "my" Mephisto and Shiro visit "her" Mephisto and Shiro in the tribute fic she wrote to me. (Suffice to say that my 18-year-old Shiro was not amused by the kind of relationship her 20-something-year-old Shiro was having with her Mephisto.) It's the same stopwatch that was used in the chapters where Rin went back in time. =)


	22. Concerning the first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will issue a WARNING, for those faint of heart, regarding the initial poetry section. You don't need to read that to get what happens after. And maybe a little warning further down too. Because Mephisto doesn't really have a human view on sexuality.
> 
> EDIT: I sent the poem to the university magazine. It got published. xD

_Those smooth forms  
_ _dream-chased, longed for; dreaded_   
_I never thought_   
_they could feel so good through rubber_

_And yes_  
 _I felt the trill, the ripple through my web of nerves_  
 _realities apart, I_  
 _prepared your wet cavity_  
 _Oh god_  
I've longed for it

_It's like a dream, I_   
_behold my fingers' handiwork_   
_Walls spread apart and  
through the blood_   
_your ragged breathing beckons me to enter_

_First time is always rough_   
_always  
trembling; eager_   
_Protection's more for you than me,_   
_darling_   
_but as I enter from the rear_   
_I know we both have longed for this_

_No resistance greets me_  
 _no groans of pain to deter_  
 _the steady rhythm of my movements_  
 _I had never imagined…_  
Darling, I'm going deeper

 _Your resilience, I worship it_  
 _unfazed by my clumsy_  
 _novice technique; I_  
 _anticipate your screaming_  
 _every moment, every breath-held tension_  
 _but you never do  
_ Good boy~

 _Giving way, your moist cavity_  
 _widens, deepens, swallows_  
all of me  
 _Adrenaline thrashes in my veins  
and I can't wait, I want_  
 _my thick juices_  
 _to fill that greedy hole of yours_

Sir Mephisto Pheles was a man - if one were generous with definitions - who enjoyed surprises. That did include ones that came in wrapped gift boxes with big sparkly ribbons tied around, naturally, but those weren't the surprises he liked the most.

Receiving erotic - albeit poorly executed - poems on the silver tray with his morning meal, now that was a more interesting surprise. It became even more interesting when Belial had no knowledge of the secret admirer's identity: he merely claimed that the slip of paper had been there when he took the tray out of its cupboard, however such a slip had found its way into Faust Mansion without anybody noticing. Nobody _had_ , or at least so they claimed; Sir Pheles was more inclined to think that one of them was lying on request from the poet.

The staff of Faust Mansion, of course, knew better than to lie to their master. One could conclude, then, that the one who set them up to it must have held a distinguished position of respect and appreciation in the household. (He promptly refused to consider that there was an individual they respected and appreciated more than him. There was nothing more respected or appreciated than working for a king.) The poet must also have had a humorous streak, and know him well enough to know his preferences in bed. And if the 'I' in the poem was also a novice to the type of intercourse suggested...

Sir Pheles sat in his bed with the breakfast tray on his lap, still dressed in the yukata he used for pyjamas. He had eaten precisely half a freshly baked scone with strawberry jam before his mind had woven a detailed imagery of how Shiro, after a good ten years of getting teased and taunted and declining Sir Pheles' advances, had taken to actually experimenting practically with his... suggestions.

His host body was instantly struck by a craving for other things than scones with strawberry jam.

* * *

Shiro enjoyed his mornings. Cram school classes were after regular classes, which meant that he had until noon before he even needed to think about getting up. Some half-forgotten dream fluttered in the margins of his consciousness as he rolled over on his back and found the perfect position on the futon; something about Mephisto hiding secret messages in Tetsuwan Atom volumes that he tried to pawn off on him... and something about a mission where he had to wrap himself in several metres of tinfoil to protect himself from... something... Never mind. His stomach was starting to demand breakfast but he could sleep a bit more. Three days a week he taught Anti-demon pharmacology, the remaining days he took missions, and life was Good. He had a job that was fun, he had colleagues that didn't openly dislike him, he had money enough not to worry about sustenance; the only thing he was really missing was-

-someone that snuggled up against him on the futon and kissed him in the morning.

"Mmh that's nice..." He smiled drowzily, wormed an arm blindly around the slender waist and parted his lips to deepen the kiss; a hot, needy kiss that lit smouldering coals in his groin. Shiro nipped teasingly at the hungry lips and felt the beard brush against-

_Beard?_

"Jesus-fucking-Christ Mephisto!" Said demon found himself tumbling down on the floor when Shiro reflexively shoved him away from himself. "What are you-?! Sneaking up on me while I'm sleeping?!"

If Shiro had been wearing glasses he might have seen the look that passed over Sir Pheles' face; surprise, annoyance, and - maybe - a tiny bit of hurt. As it were, he didn't.

"Oh come on, Shiro - surely you must have anticipated your prank to come with retaliation?" he retorted with humour, trying as best he could to cover up that he hadn't thought this was a prank.

"What prank?" Shiro had retrieved his glasses now, but looked no wiser than Sir Pheles. "I haven't thought up any prank since the prenumeration thing."

"You haven't?" This... was a new surprise. "But who else could talk my staff into sneaking this into my house?"

He handed the slip of poetry over to Shiro, who... made some quite amusing faces while reading. The icing on the cake was no doubt the expression he wore when he looked up at Sir Pheles again: a fine mix of disbelief, horror and confusion.

"You think _I_ wrote this?" He made an incredulous hand gesture to the paper. "What crap- Since _when_ have I been writing _poetry_ , hah?"

That... was something he should have thought of when he first read it. Undeniably. Sir Pheles was clever enough - and, more importantly, knew Shiro well enough - to know that his friend was as poetic as a semi-automatic gun with safety unlatched. An urge overcame him then, to snap his fingers and turn into something small that could slip out of sight unnoticed, because he knew only too well the explanation for his lapse in cognitive ability. He had wanted - _hoped_ \- that Shiro had finally reconsidered and conceded the possibility of a male bedmate. Wanted it enough to miss an obvious conclusion that his lethally sharp intellect had simply... overlooked.

"More importantly, then: who _has_ been writing poetry, and planting it in my house, if not you?" he picked up, all business and façades, and righted himself to a cross-legged position on the floor. "Someone with an odd sense of humour and a way with words..." If he had been anything other than a Prince of Gehenna, he might have face-palmed. "Dimwit", he groaned.

"Of course..." Shiro joined in the groaning and rubbed some of the remaining sleep out of his eyes. "You know, I wouldn't be the _least_ surprised if she had anticipated that you'd come running over to my place with the wrong idea if she left you this. She knows how your brain ticks and we know how her brain ticks."

Nothing was said against that statement. Hooking Dimwit up with Fulmine might have seemed like a good move when he made it, but Shiro was quite sure that Mephisto was in over his head on that one. Indeed, the two she-devils seemed to take any and every opportunity to set them up in situations like these. _They_ were becoming the puppets, both he and Mephisto.

"In the same boat, and it's sinking." Shiro sighed and tossed the paper carelessly to the floor. He then looked at Mephisto, who seemed to have had the same train of thought because he didn't look nearly as chipper as usual. Of course, the prospect of being a puppet to someone else's fancies must be even less appealing when you were used to pulling the strings yourself. "Want breakfast?" he offered, attempting to ease them out of the awkward start on the day. "I don't have much in the fridge, but I can always whip up an omelette. Now that you're here and all."

"How hospitable of you", he smirked, picking up immediately on the distraction.

"I'm a slow study, but I learn." Shiro smiled, too, and untangled himself from his bedcovers. He still slept in a pair of boxers and nothing more - that was a habit he would take to the grave - but he was sure he had a yukata somewhere that could be used as a morning gown. On the way to the wardrobe he picked up a cigarette carton and his lighter in stride.

"Do you _have_ to...?"

"This ain't your office, Princess. My place, my rules." Yes, he had remembered correctly: a blue and white striped yukata, barely used and in pristine condition. He slipped it on and spoke around the lit cigarette as he tied it. "Anything particular you want in your omelette? Not that there's much here, but I do have some shrimp purée if you like that. A little on the sweet side, am I right?"

Shiro worked as purposefully in the kitchen as he did in the field. As he asked his breakfast guest for preferences he was already hefting a makiyakinabe pan out of a cupboard, taking a moment to scrape old crusted food from the surface with his thumb nail. He then set it on the gas stove and fished out oil, eggs, rice vinegar and sugar from fridge and pantry. Lastly, he grabbed a bottle of saké and checked that it wasn't one of his best ones before he set it down on the counter with the rest of the ingredients.

Sir Pheles wasn't quite sure what to make of the situation. It hadn't turned out as he had hoped, but Chance favours an opportunist; and so, he decided that he might as well have breakfast there now that he had rushed from his first one.

"Sweetened will do."

He rose smoothly from his seat on the floor, scanning the apartment for a more suitable vantage point to survey the cooking. There wasn't really one, however. Shiro might have a job and money now, but he didn't have a home. Part of the problem was most likely that he owned very few things. He had a kotetsu, cushions to sit on, a futon, a TV, a wardrobe for his clothes, a weapon locker for his firearms and a shelf for his books, and that was all. The surest sign that the apartment belonged to a lone man was the bookshelf, really. Its contents were porn, exorcist monthlys, shoujo manga, and more porn.

Pitiful.

"You know, you could at least have gotten some curtains", he mused as the tang of burning gas diffused around the room and the fan above the stove hummed awake. The windows were bare and unfriendly. They didn't even have blinds, since Shiro could sleep no matter if it was light or dark. "Or a tablecloth." His gaze fell on the table next: pitifully naked except for assorted exams and a seemingly forgotten coffee mug. "You're an Anti-demon pharmacology teacher and you don't even have plants?"

"I don't discuss home design on an empty stomach, just so you know", Shiro informed him over the shoulder, busying himself with using a pair of chopsticks to whip the ingredients together in a bowl.

"Then I can only assume you're hungry all the time. But seriously, Shiro: not a single plant...? I know you have green fingers."

"That's for outdoor gardening. Indoors... I don't know, I just somehow forget them."

Sir Pheles could think of a number of Gehennian plants that would survive such conditions, and made a mental note to ask Amaimon for one next time his brother came by.

"Any particular colour you'd like on a plant?"

"Still haven't had breakfast. You can write a list of home design suggestions if you've got nothing else to do."

It was true that the demon didn't have anything else to do. Writing a list of possible improvements to Shiro's apartment didn't sound too enticing, however. There were books to read, admittedly, but he had come to bother Shiro; he was nowhere near done with that. The matter became even more pressing now that Shiro had turned his back to him and was busy preparing breakfast. Sir Pheles felt that the exorcist's attention simply wasn't in the right place.

"Is it difficult to make omelettes?" he asked, stepping up behind Shiro and glancing over his shoulder.

"For me? No. For you?" Shiro sniggered at the memory of his cooking. "I think your immortality is a survival thing - gotta be, if you have to eat what you cook."

"Good thing I don't have to cook, with such a capable housewife~" he shot back sweetly without missing a beat.

"Does that mean you'll be the bread-winner and supply your housewife with everything she needs?" he grinned, put the bowl down and poured a bit of oil in the makiyakinabe. "I could use some new parts for my guns, a life-long supply of food, I'm still thinking about investing in a motorcycle - and how about a piano? Or a grand piano. Then I'll need a bigger apartment - but since money's not a problem..."

"My, you sound like a demanding partner~" he replied with just the right amount of insinuating humour.

They both enjoyed a chuckle at the joke, tasting the flavour of a long and thoroughly tried friendship bond.

"Very demanding." Shiro spared one hand to tap ashes off his cigarette into a teacup. Not a regular one, even he wasn't barbaric enough to do that: the cup had been dispatched to serve as ashtray when the crack in it had grown so big it began to leak. "I'll have you know I only smoke Havana cigars, and I want three dozen ashtrays inlaid with gems and with gallstones from albino Arab horses."

"Pff, well~ I always knew you had unusual tastes..." he smiled, although the chuckle swayed a bit and forgot where it was headed: Shiro's yukata had been tied in his typical, sloppy manner, which meant it slipped at the neckline, offering a very distracting view of his neck and shoulder. "Like smoking while you cook. I'm going to _eat_ that."

"It goes into the fan you big baby. Now watch what I do: you pour half of the egg batter in first, then let it fry till you can fold in the edges and roll it."

Shiro was indeed capable - of teaching, of housework, of cooking. He could take care of himself; he _did_ take care of himself. Because there was no one else around to do it. Like the apartment he stayed in, that kind of life was barren. Cooking his meals alone, eating his meals alone, waking up and going to sleep alone... Under the murmured conversation between the stove fan and the hissing omelette, there was something more than the familiar jokes they tossed at each other.

"Oi, quit staring at my ass."

"I wasn't", he blurt out with none of his usual elegance as Shiro called his straying thoughts back to realty.

"Doesn't matter where you were staring 'cause it wasn't at the frying pan. Look: I've folded the edges, and now I'm rolling it. Like this. But only halfway. Then we take the rest of the egg, pour it out like this..." Shiro expertly poured the remainder of the bowl's contents into the pan and let it fry until the two omelettes had become one big omelette that could be rolled together with some help from chopsticks and fingers. As the final touch, he packed the omelette roll together lightly with a frying spade. "And that's how you make tamagoyaki", he concluded and lifted the roll over on a plate. "Your turn."

And with that, he held the frying spade out to the blank-faced Sir Pheles.

* * *

"Not yet." Shiro stilled Sir Pheles' hand by grabbing the chopsticks in them. "Probe along the edges to be sure it has set before you start folding. Otherwise you'll end up with scrambled eggs instead."

Cooking took an awful lot of concentration. Sir Pheles squinted and did his best to pull in the edges of the omelette without tearing it. Rolling was even harder; Shiro had to help him make the first fold and then handed the chopsticks back to let him do the rest. However, the delay had already taken its toll: when the omelette was rolled the underside was darkened and gave off a sharp, unpleasant smell.

"You're a terrible housewife", Shiro observed with a grin and a happy pat on the demon's shoulder. "What do you say about splitting the job? I get to do the cooking and you get to wear the skirts and pantyhoses."

"That I don't mind at all. Is it easier for you to leave the closet if I dress like a woman?" He poured the remaining egg over the half roll and was _determined_ not to burn the new bit.

"I just like that funny strut you get when you dress like a woman, it's like- Oi don't let it spread behind the roll, you gotta guide it - here, let me."

Shiro's hand closed around his and tilted the pan so that the new egg mix didn't end up surrounding the half roll. It was a banale beginner's mistake, but Sir Pheles barely registered. He wished that he wasn't so acutely aware of the callouses in the palm that clasped his hand over the pan's handle, or how the motion had made Shiro's yukata neckline slide to show even more skin.

He wished he wasn't so very aware of how his own hand felt cold when the exorcist let go.

"Now make sure they've fried together before you roll it." Even Shiro had noticed how his yukata slipped this time: he pulled it up and adjusted the sash around his waist.

"Can we make those cute apple slice bunnies? The ones that go in bento boxes?" he requested with a bright smile. He _had_ always wanted those. It wasn't like he was trying to distract himself from something. Especially not from that aching tightening in his chest.

Shiro gave him a blank look at first, then he snorted and plucked the cigarette butt from his lips, putting it out in the teacup with a merry chuckle.

"Make up your mind, Princess: are you gonna be my housewife or my ten year old daughter?"

"My, I didn't know you were into Loli - then again, Catholic priests..." He shot Shiro a dirty smirk and began to gingerly fold in the edges of the omelette.

"Coming from one who fucks his own granddaughters?" the priest in question replied with a dirty smirk of his own.

"Coming from one who fucked my granddaughter right after I did?" he shot back with an even wider grin.

A silence passed by briefly, just to see which one of them would burst into laughter first. In the end they cracked up simultaneously, and the barren apartment briefly became something a little closer to a home. Shared memories made the tint of the walls a little warmer, and a parade of old jokes and embarrassments accompanied them to the kotatsu with their respective plate of tamagoyaki. Shiro didn't drop the topic of how badly the burnt parts of the omelette tasted, and Sir Pheles didn't drop the topic of the missing apple bunnies, and since neither of them would leave the matter they concluded that they needed more cooking classes.

But next time, Sir Pheles would have to knock before he entered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was goofing around and then a wild story appeared.
> 
> The basic idea was the poem, which is about the first time a dentist drills a tooth. ...Yes, really, that is what it's about. Wasn't that obvious? It's wet and you wedge the teeth apart with a metal guard between for protection, the process of excavation is called "cavity preparation", there's a little blood and you have to drill deep in to get all the caries away before you fill the cavity... êwê Really though, the way dentists speak of that occasion, that "first time", you get the idea it's like losing one's virginity. I just had to do this, okay? My first tooth was a 46 with secondary caries. The patient had two fillings that needed to be done but I specifically requested to start with that tooth because sheesh, "entering through the rear"? A hell of a lot more fun images to play with there than you get from "entering through the top". So yeah I'm trolling Mephisto as usual. =0u0'=
> 
> ...And I miss my good old bantering couple. ._. So I'm clinging to these shots from the future to comfort myself through their present conditions. (That plant Mephisto brings later is the same plant that sits in Shiro's apartment in Shiro sin julbock känner, de äro gode vänner because I evidently read too much Stephen King when I was little. The prenumeration prank, the piano, and the part about Mephisto sleeping with his granddaughters will be explained later in TEotB, too.)


	23. Concerning February 14th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this one Valentine's Day when my girlfriend was visiting relatives on the other side of the planet… TTwTT

Time flew like an arrow sometimes. It pierced through month after month and left Shiro behind in a sort of tumbling confusion where it was still Christmas and he had to ask Kyodo for help with getting the twins' gifts wrapped on time. It had been nearly two months since Christmas, though. The Christmas tree had been disposed of and the decorations had been packed down in boxes to hibernate in the attic until next year, but other than that not much was different. There was still snow on the ground if one looked out the monastery's windows, and the snowman the boys had made on New Year's still stood despite a short spell of warmer weather that had made its carrot horn drop off. Yes, a carrot horn. Shiro smiled at the memory every time he thought of it.

He had observed the boys through the window as they diligently rolled ball after ball in the white backyard – Yukio's trails aligned and meticulous to conserve raw material, Rin's a spiralling cobweb made by a drunk spider. Shiro had been completely distracted from the reports he was supposed to be writing. He should be used to fatherhood by now, when his sons were nine and himself he had passed the line of forty, but when he watched his two boys playing in the snow the tender warmth of affection rose inside him like steam from a hot bath. Nobody could have believed that Rin was Satan's son if they saw him. He was incredibly gentle with his brother, always had been, and would not tolerate injustice. A good kid. A kid with a knack for getting in trouble, but with the proper guidance even kids like that could grow into fine adults.

Shiro had smiled at the scene on the other side of the window. It was when the two were alone together that the timid Yukio would unwind, and those anxious, intelligent eyes would lose some of their tension as he lost himself in the simple fun of children's games.

Shiro had been so distracted by the fuzziness of fatherhood that it had taken him a while to notice that there were four big balls of snow sitting in line in the backyard, and that another two were in the making. Intrigued, he had turned his chair away from the desk altogether and watched the progress of the non-snowman curiously. All in all, there had been seven snowballs lined up after each other, and then Rin had come pushing a huge eighth one towards the rest. He had lifted it – which no seven-year-old should have been able to – to place it on top of the last ball, but Yukio had stopped him. Shiro hadn't heard anything through the window, but Yukio had been gesturing at their snowball line and probably convinced his brother that the smaller ball would be crushed if he put the big one on top. Rin's face had brightened with a grateful grin, and he had put the big snowball at the end of the line instead. Once it had been equipped with a snowball nose, two pinecone eyes and a carrot horn on top of its head, the twins had come storming in – trailing snow all over the place – and urged him to come out and look at their Weedle. Apparently, a Weedle was one of the insect creatures in an anime they liked to watch.

It was with a smile that Shiro left the paperwork on his desk, wrapped his white scarf around his neck and tossing the end over his shoulder as he left the monastery. As often as he could, he would collect the twins after school and walk them home. If he was called away on a mission the duty would fall on one of his dependable colleagues at the monastery, but he preferred doing it himself. There was nothing in the world that beat the sight of his two little mochis dashing at him with their backpacks bumping against their shoulders. They had thoroughly instructed him to never, _ever_ call them mochis in school though. It was a baby nickname, and it was Embarrassing; so naturally, the whole monastery made sure to keep it in use. It had arisen because the twins were like mochis, albeit in different ways: Yukio because he needed to be wrapped tightly in a baby blanket to feel safe and calm down enough to sleep (plus it looked very sweet when he was) and Rin because he stuck to his brother like glue (and of course, he was very sweet too).

"Daddy!"

"Whoa there, charging bull!" The kneeling priest laughed as he absorbed the impact of his eldest son throwing himself into his arms. "Now make some room for Yukio or you'll get squashed."

Those were always empty threats, and everyone involved knew it. Yukio came jogging after his brother with a gentle smile on his lips but was worlds apart from the energetic, uncontrollable Rin – who had apparently forgotten his mittens in school, because Yukio was carrying them in a tight grip in his right hand. He greeted his father with a smile and a small bow.

"So how was school?" he asked once Rin let go of him.

"It was as usual."

"It was great!"

Shiro's eyebrows instantly rose in surprise. For Rin to say that school had been great something truly great must have happened. The boy was rummaging around the pockets of his bulky winter jacket with hasty fingers that couldn't find the desired object quick enough. In no time he had fished out a paper – a folded paper that had suffered somewhat from being stuffed into a pocket – and held it out to Shiro with a face of joy as pure and bright as the snow.

"We're going on a class trip! To Hakuba! We're gonna see monkeys! And bathe in _real_ hot springs!"

"We don't know that, Nii-san", Yukio intervened, wanting to put a lid on his brother's enthusiasm before it boiled over – or was suddenly quelled. "There's a fee to pay if you want to go on that trip. I calculated how much that will be for two." He flashed a quick glance at Shiro; looking for reaction, seeking confirmation. Then he looked at his brother again. "You go on the trip, Nii-san. If we can afford one, it should be you." The corners of his mouth turned up in a soft smile. "You've been talking about it since we were given the notification."

Rin looked like he had been stabbed. Disbelief took possession of his features, and the enthusiasm from before was gone.

"No!" He shook his head furiously. "If Yukio can't go then I won't go either!" He folded-crumpled the paper note back together again and shoved it into his pocket. The gaze he levelled on his brother was one of determination, of pride, and of loyalty one wouldn't find in the finest breed of dog. "There won't be classes those days", he observed with a wide grin full of gaps with half-grown teeth, "so we can have fun even if we stay here!"

It was a bright smile, but not as bright as the one he had flashed when he thought he was going to Hakuba and see monkeys.

Shiro could feel his heart literally twisting in his chest. All good fathers want to make their children happy. They don't want to make them put on bright smiles to cover the disappointment when they're too poor to go on class trips. It was true, though. The brief time he had been able to see the note he had read how much the school trip cost – fees for renting skiing equipment not included – and no, he wouldn't be able to send both his sons to Hakuba. He had set money aside for months to buy those light-weight beginner firearms he had gotten for Yukio. There was no margin in the budget for this kind of expense.

But that had been the first time Rin had _ever_ smiled at the thought of something that involved school and classmates…

"You're not staying here", he told them, putting on a mischievous smile. He could have bitten his tongue off there and then, for what he said would cost him dearly, but if that was the price to see that smile on his son's face, then… "Don't underestimate your old man. You'll be going to Hakuba with the rest of your class: both of you."

* * *

There were two ways to get favours from Mephisto. You could do it the standard way and offer him something in return for his services; or you could make bets with him, and if you won your wish wouldn't cost a thing. The flipside with the bets was of course that you could also lose and get to pay up for nothing. So to ensure that he would keep his promise to his sons, Shiro settled for the safe option – although "safe" was a very relative term when it was up to Mephisto to decide what he wanted in return.

"Letting your sons enjoy a holiday in good company: how kind of you~" he mused slowly; one could practically hear the cogs turning in his mind. His green eyes leisurely scanned Shiro's form across the office desk, and a pleased smile crept up on his lips. "Why, on the basis of equal exchange, I will of course ask the same in return. Make sure your schedule is free on February 14th, Shiro~"

…He really should have seen this coming. That he hadn't anticipated it didn't mean that he would relinquish control of the situation, however. Shiro just crossed his arms and shot his employer a deadpan stare.

"Pick another holiday."

But Mephisto didn't budge an inch either.

"Any particular board games you intend to play with the twins during their home stay?" he asked and leaned back in his chair with an aura of perfectly untroubled dickishness. "I just might join in."

Under other circumstances, Shiro would have dropped negotiations and let the greedy son of a bitch walk out of the deal as empty-handed as he was. This time, however, he would be walking back home to see that bright smile die on Rin's lips a _second_ time, even when he had promised…

" _That kid will be the death of me_ ", he sighed, knowing he was defeated already but keeping the air of cool outwardly. "Just a regular, traditional Valentine's?"

"Just a regular, traditional Valentine's", Mephisto echoed blithely, and smiled.

* * *

A regular, traditional Valentine's they had agreed on. That was alright. Shiro had eaten dinner with Mephisto before, and had given him chocolate before: and, since he had handled an inebriated Mephisto, he had also staved off a horny Mephisto before. These were the thoughts that occupied his brain as he grabbed the knocker on the front door of Faust Mansion and rapped it against the wood.

His thoughts after that were not very coherent.

"What- Where's- I thought-" Well, for one thing he had thought he'd seen every disturbing article of clothing in the clown's wardrobe, but clearly he had been wrong. "Traditional Valentine's…?!"

Mephisto, not Belial, had answered the door, and in nothing but his… lingerie. His _latex_ lingerie. And a friggin' _whip_.

"I thought you meant dinner and chocolate!"

"Oh but I meant traditional _Roman_ Valentine's, Shiro~" he smiled, and it was a smile that would have made the devil cringe, as he threaded a latex-gloved hand in under Shiro's tie. "The kind where you strip down naked and spank me with a goat skin whip."

"I _WHAT_?!"

"Or~ I could handle the whipping?" he suggested in low, silken tones, tugging on the tie like a collar as he pressed himself closer to the exorcist. "I think you're the one in most need of a fertility ritual, Father Fujimoto~" he snickered and pulled his date into the mansion.

...He really should have seen this coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **As for the Lupercalia,** I know I'm stretching things with the Roman Lupercalia - it isn't confirmed that there is any connection between the Roman tradition and ours except that it falls on the same date. Buuuut Mephisto is Mephisto. :3


	24. Concerning relatives and April Fools

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally **Inferno chapter 80** , but on request from readers I'm moving it here now that the real chapter 80 is posted. =)

Shiro drew four slow breaths filled with the fresh scent of mowed grass, trying to convince his gut that the door before him was as harmless as any other door, and that it was ridiculous to think anything else. Bereru was in the better parts of True Cross Town. The house before him was spacious, the garden looked like something out of a home design magazine, and that door was much safer than many doors he'd knocked on in his life.

The bell gave a soft, pleasant duo of tones on the other side of the door when he rang it. Steps. Shiro caught himself holding his breath and wondered just when his body would stop acting stupid about this. He had been on the verge of turning around at least three times on his way there, and for what? It wasn't like there was going to be any demon waiting for him in there, just humans. Just humans.

…but damn if they weren't more frightening than demons sometimes.

"Welcome, Master Shiro."

For the briefest of moments Shiro thought that Samael had pranked him and linked uncle Satoshi's door to his mansion. The one who opened was a butler, but upon closer inspection it wasn't Belial. This man was perfectly human, but just as disturbingly polite.

"Uh… It's okay to just call me Shiro."

Well, for Shiro it was. For the butler, it wasn't. He bowed, as he had done when he first opened.

"Master Shiro, tradition dictates that a clean, unbreakable line be drawn between a family and their butler. Therefore, it is necessary for the operation of a household that you address me as Watanabe, and I in turn address you by your proper title: Master Shiro."

Once again, Watanabe reminded Shiro of Belial. That ability to chastise or complain while still sounding appropriately polite seemed to be part of every butler's training.

"Shiro-kun, welcome!"

Watanabe stepped aside and bowed in one fluid motion, making room for the smartly dressed man that approached the door. Shiro's first, random thought was that uncle Satoshi didn't look much like his brother, aside his build.

Hideo and Satoshi had been like the pines that grow on cliffs leaning over the sea; forced to grow in meagre soil, struggling against the harsh winds for every centimetre that they gain. The Great Depression and the Second World War had made food scarce and work scarcer, a time that made the people of Japan grow short and sinewy and tough as bones. But bones are rounded; smooth. Uncle Satoshi was hard as rock, full of jagged angles; almost as if the jutting cheekbones strove to grow into a shelf to support the thin-rimmed glasses on his nose. His hair was greying, something that made his sharply hewn features seem like he was made of granite with the paint flaking off in places.

"Uncle." It was an unfamiliar word on his lips, but he didn't linger on it as he bowed, returning the smile.

…somehow, Satoshi's scanning gaze was worse than Samael's. Not because it was sharp, but because it was soft.

"Look at you, how much you've grown. Congratulations on the big day, Shiro-kun." Satoshi sounded proud, as if he had been congratulating his own son on turning twenty. And then, as quick as it had come, the pride was replaced with concern: "But what has happened with your hair? Are you bleaching it?"

The trace of disapproval in the question made Shiro smile to himself. Old people stuck to old ways. His hair would probably be a topic of discussion for everyone that met him until he was old enough to actually go silver; until then, he had a lie handy for questions like Satoshi's.

"No, I'm just greying early: study stress, I'm told."

At that, the smile on Satoshi's face brightened. It looked very much like his brother's: charming, reassured, with a hint of mischief hiding in the corners.

"You study hard then? Ah, where are my manners! Come in, come in."

"Shiro-nii-san!" a new voice interrupted before Shiro could make it past the threshold. Across the tatami mats, a girl came flying towards them with a ponytail of black hair streaming behind her like a banner. She came to a halt one step behind her father, beaming at Shiro, and introduced herself: "I'm Chiharu! Nice to meet you!"

Ah. The youngest cousin. …who kept smiling, while her eyes seemed to look him over and take in everything about him with a meticulousness that was bordering on unnerving.

"Hi. Nice to meet you too, Chiharu-chan."

Shiro was sincerely hoping the awkwardness didn't show in his voice.

* * *

Shiro wasn't quite sure exactly how he got in or how he got his shoes off. There was a surreal tint to everything that made it hard to grasp, with every new moment so vivid and intense to his senses that the one before it faded from memory immediately. He was in his uncle's house, and while it was really just a house it was his _uncle's_ house. And he was in it. And that _was_ surreal.

Someone asked how his trip had been and he might have replied something vague about a dog and a baby cart, his mind busy with taking in the height of the ceiling, the pleasant light filtering in through the stained glass windows, and the photographs lining the corridor Satoshi ushered him through. Most of the frames showed weddings; one, two, three of them. One wedding photo was in black and white, probably Satoshi's and Noriko's own. Then there was another photo in black and white.

Satoshi noticed him stopping and came to stand next to him.

"Yes, there we are. All three of us. This is me." He pointed a thin finger at the boy to the left in the photograph. The army uniform on him looked like it was brand new, with ironed jacket and spotless leg straps tied around his shins. "Seventeen years old, I had only just been conscripted for training", he told him, with that special nostalgia people feel when they speak of old prides and achievements. "I already knew a lot from Otou-san and Nii-san. You can tell who this is, no?"

To be honest, that was the reason Shiro had stopped so suddenly at that photo. It might as well have been a mirror, an enchanted one that showed the world in black-and-white and on smaller scale. The figure to the right stood straight and proud in his bulky jumpsuit uniform, with fur-trimmed lapels and a white scarf sticking up in the lining at his neck. His hair was trimmed short, like his father's and his brother's, and in his left hand was a leather cap and goggles that hung almost casually against his leg.

"Dad was a pilot?"

The surreal feeling wavered for a moment, like fog clearing away into a carpet of dew.

"Yes. We both fought in the war, and both made it out alive. Sometimes the kami are generous." There was a smile there, somewhere, but it didn't quite reach Satoshi's lips. "Not always, though. I suppose you can guess who this is?"

Satoshi pointed to the last figure in the photograph. This man's uniform had seen war, not just training camps. He was only slightly taller than his sons, and must have been middle-aged but wore the face of one who had aged beyond his years. Shiro could tell where Satoshi got his sharp bone structure from.

"That's Fujimoto Kanetake." It was meant to come out as a question, but it sounded more like a statement. "My granddad."

"Yes. And this here is Saki, my eldest daughter." Satoshi moved on to the wedding photos, pointing out a young woman who beamed at the camera in her white kimono with red lining. Shiro had absolutely no memory of her, but she was pretty.

"Saki-nee is really nice, she loves baking and her food is _really_ tasty – and she has two children." Chiharu filled in. "Kaede-chan and Sasuke-kun. And Kaede calls me Auntie Chi when we play! But Onee-san isn't coming today 'cause Kaede got an ear infection. I had an ear infection too when I was little."

"Uh-huh…" Shiro wasn't quite able to process Chiharu's happy stream of words. It had been some time since he had had a family, and now he had four cousins plus two… whatever children of one's cousins were.

"This is Tomoe, my second eldest." Satoshi was already at the other wedding photo. "Her husband is a member of the board of directors at the Tomy Company." And he looked like he might play with children's toys, too: a boy's face on a man's body. "They're expecting their first child in a matter of weeks."

"Tomoe-nee is _huge_ , but that's because she used to be very slim – Akane-nee and I could never inherit any of her clothes. Now her back hurts all the time and she's nauseous a lot, so she's not coming either", Chiharu confided helpfully, hands clasped behind her back. Shiro had the strange but not entirely impossible thought that she might be clasping her hands like that to keep herself from dragging him off to talk about the rest of the house.

Four cousins plus two and a half cousin children. _Goddamn…_ There was something frightening but at the same time very appealing about the thought – like being told you've won an award and part of the prize is to represent your school in a tournament.

"I'm sorry neither Saki nor Tomoe could come today", Satoshi apologised with a small nod of a bow. "They would have liked to meet you and congratulate you, but – circumstances."

"No no, it's fine. It's already a lot more people than I'm used to. Will Akane-chan be here?"

Akane was the cousin closest to him in age, the one he had spent most time with, and the one he had thought was very cute when they were little. He didn't have any such thoughts now – she was his _cousin_ , after all – but he was nonetheless curious to see what she looked like now. He couldn't claim he remembered much of what she _had_ looked like when they chased Tomoe at the playground all those years ago, except that she had looked surprisingly cute despite missing both of her front teeth.

As if on cue, the front door opened, and it barely had time to shut before an authoritative voice called out:

"Dad, I need 30 000 yen."

The voice alone was startling, but 30 000 yen? What did a high school girl need 30 000 yen for? And why was such a _darn cute_ high school girl his cousin?

Akane wore a very pretty, white dress to go with her doll-like face, which was framed in a flattering way by a carefully managed bob cut. With the matching little hat topping the creation off, she looked like she could have stepped out of a fashion magazine.

"Akane, look who's here: it's your cousin, Shiro-kun. You played together when you were little, remember?"

"Hi." Akane barely even looked at him. "I need money." And she paid even less attention at Satoshi's attempt to nudge the conversation in a more hospitable direction.

"Honey, what do you need that money for?"

Akane's pretty face was marred by a not ugly, but quite aggravating expression of impatience. Satoshi had posed a perfectly valid question, in Shiro's opinion, but Akane reacted to it as if her father was an idiot for even needing to ask.

"My graduation, remember? Dad, I _graduate_ this spring. I need new clothes."

"But you bought that dress last week?"

"Yeah – last week. I need _new_ clothes for my graduation."

Shiro was trying _hard_ to keep the twitches out of his face. He took a page from Chiharu's book and clasped his hands behind his back, quietly rehearsing scripture verses to keep focused and keep calm.

"It's once in a lifetime, dad", Akane pleaded, looking for all the world like she might turn on the waterworks if the current charm attack didn't get her what she wanted. "I need a once in a lifetime dress or the moment will be ruined."

Shiro _hoped_ that Satoshi wouldn't budge. But family is strange that way. Blood ties can make certain people accept behaviours they wouldn't accept otherwise. Satoshi placed his hands on Akane's shoulders, and Shiro could see a disgusting little smile of victory form on her lips.

"Once in a lifetime", he echoed, gazing at his daughter with pride that only a father can exude. "Make that a memorable once, honey."

With those words, Satoshi strode back into the hall with Akane in tow, and began counting yen bills from the wallet in his coat pocket. While their backs were facing Shiro, he let the mask fall and pulled a grimace that spoke his true feelings – then he remembered that Chiharu was present, too. But when he glanced down at his youngest cousin, she was pulling the exact same grimace.

What happened next was what always seemed to happen, the rare times Shiro relaxed his defences a little.

"Do you know what velvet bean is?" he whispered discreetly, leaning ever so slightly sideways towards Chiharu.

"No?" She looked a little startled, but replied in the same whispered manner.

"It's a medicinal plant, I noticed your neighbour has one in his garden. That tree that grows blue flowers almost like wisteria. You can use it for many things – including making itching powder. One ground seed pod should make her graduation dress memorable for a lifetime."

When Satoshi and Akane joined their company and headed for the dining room, Chiharu struggled visibly to keep her face in check.

* * *

The dinner was, like everything else in the house, classy. The meats were juicy and the marinades delicious, but more than anything it was the sounds that held Shiro's attention captive. There were many sounds around the table; sounds of china bowls being lifted and put back on the table, sounds of teacups being emptied and filled, sounds of people eating and talking. They were still strangers to him, this family that had grown in the same soil while he had been replanted far away from him, and they shared bonds of a kind that he might never be able to grow… but they still welcomed him as one of their own.

And that was surreal.

Much of the dinner, when Satoshi held the word, was a course in family history. Shiro was told about Fujimoto Kanetake, who had been deported to a Soviet labour camp when the occupied Manchuoko was taken by the Russians in 1945. He was told about Fujimoto Hidenori, Kanetake's younger brother, who had fallen in the Battle of Shanghai in 1937. He was told many things he had never known about his family, but the most surprising thing was perhaps that, up until the disbanding of the Imperial Japanese Army during the occupation, the Fujimotos had a strong connection to the military.

Things had changed after the war. His dad had become employed in a company that ran economic surveys. Uncle Satoshi had started a logistics service that grew in tandem with the rebuilding of the Japanese industry and was now a fairly large business in True Cross Town. But a war like that never truly leaves the ones that were part of it.

"The war was terrible", Satoshi said gravely. "Towards the end we had no more iron or steel. But we didn't give up. We were prepared to fight the Americans with sharpened bamboo spears and wooden bullets."

There was a pride in Satoshi's voice what made Shiro a bit uneasy when his uncle looked at him; it was a pride that refused to be contested, and yet he felt like Satoshi was challenging him to see if he would contest it or not. It was… as if he were being tested, without being informed that there was a test, and Shiro didn't like that feeling.

"I was given one such bamboo spear. Two metres long, barely thick as a man's wrist." Satoshi illustrated by taking a firm grip of his own wrist with the hand that wasn't holding chopsticks. "We knew we couldn't win with such weapons. Our Captain kept holding speeches saying that we would, because our spirit was stronger than that of the Americans. Anyone could tell we wouldn't. We all knew we wouldn't. But we didn't give up." There was a glow in Satoshi's eyes when he spoke; a glow of pride, a glow of strength, and of something hard and uncompromising. "Because our spirit _was_ stronger than that of the Americans. Had they been left with only spears to fight with, they would have surrendered: we didn't. We were going to fight to the end and die to defend our country. That's what makes the difference between men and heroes."

There was a pause when Satoshi gulped down a mouthful of tea to wet his throat, but no one around the table made any move to speak in his stead. This topic was important to him, and no one would attempt to take it from him until he was done.

"I can't expect you to understand what that is like, without having experienced it", he said, specifically addressing Shiro as he did. "It's a special moment, to feel that. Your life; it suddenly matters, because you know you will be doing something great with it. That, the Captain was right about. At the end of each such speech he would raise his sword, and we all began singing Doki no Sakura. The true anthem of Japan." Yes, this topic was important to Satoshi. One could see the emotion glistening in the corners of his eyes, hear it swell in his controlled voice. This was something he needed to say. "I thought of my father and brother when we sang. I hoped that they, too, got to know that feeling, wherever they were; by then it was impossible to get accurate reports, you see. What I knew was that we had only a handful operational planes left in the Imperial Air Force, and our pilots were assigned either to die in tokkou tai attacks or fight on the ground", Satoshi confided, face etched with sombre memories and a stern pride. "We fought. We died. Many friends of mine died. Then the Americans dropped the bombs."

The look Satoshi gave him then spoke of things Shiro could never imagine, and never wanted to imagine. The silence that surrounded the table that moment, brief as it was, contained the silent homage of a nation.

"Pikadon", Satoshi murmured. A word weighing a hundred thousand lives. "It became our new word for destruction when destruction wasn't enough. I didn't see when it hit, but my remaining battalion cleared up what once was Hiroshima – another thing you can't imagine if you weren't there. Everything was rubble. Everything was burnt. You couldn't tell what had been houses and what had been streets." Satoshi paused, refilling his teacup even though it wasn't empty yet; Shiro knew, because it was easier to rest his eyes on that piece of porcelain than on his uncle when he spoke of these things. "For days we did nothing but burn bodies. Day and night, the fires burnt – there was no time to identify the dead. We wouldn't have been able to identify them even if there had been time. We could barely move them because the skin, it fell off; like on cooked fish. We found survivors, sometimes. Blinded, burnt." Satoshi's eyes were distant, looking at things that no longer were, and never should have been. "I remember this man who had been facing the explosion when it came; we found him crawling over the debris one morning. His face was gone – melted. His skin hung like rags from his arms. We debated with ourselves, 'should we take him to the hospital, or would it be more merciful to shoot him?' What did I do, you ask? I whistled for a cab, and when it came near, the license plate said 'fresh' and there were dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought 'naw forget it, yo home to Bereru!' I pulled up to the house about seven or eight and I yelled to the cabbie 'yo homes smell ya later!' Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there. To settle my throne as the prince of Bereru", Satoshi finished. And took another sip of tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And about now, I expect you've all figured out what this is about. April Fools is a thing in Sweden, too, after all. ;9 So I hope my brother and I managed to surprise you a bit (and that my sense of humour isn't too brutal). The Fresh Prince of Bel Air meme is old, but with Shiro going to visit his Uncle and Aunt… It just felt like the right option for an April Fools prank.


	25. Concerning breakdowns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **"I can't help but wonder how Mephisto would react to Shiro just... Breaking down in front of him."**
> 
>  
> 
>  **KatnapKradle** tickled my muse in **Inferno ch 65**.

Some things break quietly. Some don’t. Quick or slow, loud or muted… All things break eventually.  
  
Winter had borne down on Japan like a storm of arrows, laying seige to the soaring buildings of the Academy and pressing rime frost roses against the windows of the library studiolo. The wooden frames leached cold and the sound of gusts throwing themselves at the tower walls. His knitted jumper didn’t help. Shiro kept his hands sandwiched between his thighs for warmth while he stuttered through his Italian course book. There was an intermediary between being warm and being cold, a state where the body becomes numb and sluggish and muscles simply won’t do their job.  
  
It’s worse than being cold. You can feel the body’s engines slow, feel systems shut down and strip you of your functions one by one.  
  
Not warm or cold but numb. Turned to stone. Alive but not living.  
  
And that heartless, prattling asshole not giving a shit.  
  
“The Doctor Meister will be smooth sailing if you grasp the anatomy and physiology part as quickly as you do pharmacology. Mrs Moriyama is so pleased with you – would have wanted to teach you next semester as well, she told me.”  
  
Shiro replied with his usual, toxic silence. Head bowed, ignoring everything except the words printed on the page…  
  
…the wet stains quietly darkening the page…  
  
He wanted Moriyama to teach him next semester. He didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be numb.  
  
Didn’t want to break.  
  
Shiro bit his lip. Locked his trembling fingers to the chair seat. Drew his shoulders tight, tense –  tenser still, a strangled earthquake screaming in his chest and burning his eyes.  
  
Not now. God, not now. Not with–  
  
“That reminds me – we’ll have to cut class short today”, Samael recalls with a soft hum. “Spring schedule needs to be discussed and approved before winter break is here. Take the spare hour to work on your verb conjugations, hm?”  
  
The chair screeched over the floor planks. Shiro rose, swept up his course book, and vanished out the door without ever lifting his eyes.  
  
If he had, he might have noticed something strange about Samael: a stiffness that had little in common with his usual, graceful posture. Samael, on the other hand, was grateful that Shiro found the floor so endlessly interesting.  
  
Demons aren’t _bothered_ by human breakdowns; they crave them like alcoholics crave their bottles. The energy unleashed from such a thing is mindblowing, an ecstacy trip to the blind side of the moon and back with a comet crash. That is true for Samael as well as any other demon.  
  
...That pressing nausea must be from something bad he ate.


	26. Concerning chance meetings and memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there.
> 
> It's been a messy few weeks. I've switched living quarters and haven't had internet access or time to sink into the apathy that felt so inviting after the American election. There have been people contacting me to tell me that my stories are a speck of light in these depressing times, and you know - that helped me get my mind and feelings together somewhat. I don't like the feeling of not being able to do anything about something that troubles me - which is pretty much the case right now and for the next four years. But if me escaping into the happier realm of imagination can provide a few minutes of escape for others then, well, that is something I can do?
> 
> This one-shot was requested by **AnimeHails** , I believe. It's just the kind of nice, comforting fantasyscape I want to stroll around in right now.
> 
> Good vibes to everyone out there, and especially to American readers. You can do this. Your country has a long history of people fighting for what's right and winning. Give future generations some beautiful, inspiring fights to read about in their history books.
> 
> / Dimwit

True Cross Academy is a gaudy thing, as spectacular as it is eccentric – maybe a little haughty about it, too. Maybe even a lot.

True Cross Town is not much like the academy it was built around. It refuses no one, judges no one, rather choosing to believe that there is a place to fit every person. In that sense, the town and its academy are quite alike: a grand mosaic, a place composed of smaller places. Some of them invite you in, like vendors proudly offering to show you their wares: others shroud themselves in privacy, shutting out all but the select few they choose to reveal themselves to. There is, no doubt, a place for every person.

True Cross has a lake, high up in the forested zone. A hill is no place for a lake, usually, but this is one that likes to surprise. It is a bit on the mischievous side, and quite reserved: the kind of place that… invites the unexpected.

"Wow – Kinzo was right, it _is_ perfect!"

"Whaaat? I was the one who told you about this place!"

"After your brother told you about it." The discussion was settled by a tall young man who wore his scowl with practiced ease.

"There's mulberry trees!" There's a bright blonde head among them, and a smile just as bright on the face of the girl it belongs to. "Rin, can you make mulberry cake?"

"Ueh? I– I've never really baked much, just cooked."

"I know how", offered a girl with brown hair and gentle face. "We could bake it together?" The others' beaming is approval enough. "Izumo and I can bring some ingredients from our dorm and then we could all help out!"

All together seven teenagers entered the lake clearing with towels and chatter and rustling in the tall, unkempt grass. Chatter and laughter came with them, and before long there was splashing and yelling too, as they all ended up in the lake one way or another. Quite the mix, they were, of different tempers, sizes, and aspirations. But isn't that the embodiment of youth? A time of growing and of searching for that size and temper and aspiration that is just right for you.

It was only a matter of time before the lake showed its mischievous side.

"Wha…? How long has she been there?" the boy named Rin blurt out.

Quite a while – perhaps. And perhaps she had just arrived, seating herself below the aspen tree under cover of their boisterous, noisy games.

"Eww some creepy old lady is peeping at us while we bathe?!" wailed the boy whose older brother held more credit than he did.

"And you have any right to talk?!" He scowled more than ever, that tall one with all the metal in his ears.

"Hey, lady!" Rin waved heartily. "Wanna have picnic with us?"

"Ya wanna have picnic with a creepy ol' lady who's been watchin' ya bathe?" she shouted back with a smile in her voice.

The tall one grabbed his friend by the neck and dunked his head below the water surface in a deep bow.

"Renzo is sorry he's an idiot, please forgive him!"

The laughter was a young woman's, rich in fire and mischief. Her movements were a young woman's, too, when she laid her staff and satchel down and they all sat down around the feast. Perhaps she was young, too: none of them could tell. Life had worked her hard, had worked her tough, like driftwood shaped by sun and salt and sea into that special kind of beauty time can't touch; grey but vibrant, weatherworn but strong.

They ate and talked, and at some point Paku mustered up the courage to ask what was in that satchel.

True Cross Academy is a gaudy thing; real treasures don't need that kind of boasting. Real treasures draw their value from the hands that make them and the hands that receive them.

"Oooh the combs are so cute!" Paku's eyes shone brighter with every ornamental piece the wrinkled hands delivered from the satchel. "Shiemi, that one with the flowers for your hair…"

"Your mom would love those oven mitts, Bon", said the boy with glasses a mite too big for his petite frame.

"She would… I just don't know if she would use them. She wouldn't want to ruin the embroidery."

"Don'tcha worry 'bout the embroidery", she assured them with a crooked smile. "I wouldn't make things that couldn't be used."

Real treasures are made with love, kept with love, and every single thing she lifts out on the blanket is a treasure. There are charms and brooches, shawls and jewellery, and there is one thing that Rin can't take his eyes from.

"These are almost like the ones the old man had." Rin scooped up the string up for inspection: a cord for glasses with painted beads strung on it. Not quite like the old man's, but enough to evoke the sweet feeling only good memories can give. "Maybe I should get one for Yukio?"

"He looked up to Father Fujimoto a lot", Shiemi chimed in. "I… think he might appreciate it. Yuki keeps his feelings inside, so if he… If he had something outside that could remind him of his father maybe he could let go inside."

Rin turned the beads in his hands. They weren't his father's, yet his fingers knew the weight of a treasure when they felt it.

"How much do these cost?"

"A man o' taste, I see. Those don't come cheap, son." The glint in her eye was not the kind you want to see in anyone you're about to trade with. "They'll cost you a story."

"A… story?"

"A story", she confirmed with a grin. "'Bout that old man o' yours."

Rin looked no less confused by the request. He was about to ask why… but somehow that was not the thing to do.

"Umm… There was a playground dad always used to take us to, my brother and I", he began. "It had a slide and some swings and a couple of spring riders that I think were meant to be horses but they looked more like pigs.

"We could play there for hours. One time dad said we had to go home or supper wouldn't get done on time, so we did, but Yukio and I – Yukio's my brother – wanted to play more. So when nobody was looking I lifted Yukio up so he could turn the door handle and we snuck out. We just couldn't find the playground", he chuckled and scratched the back of his head self-consciously. "After a while we couldn't find our way back home either. It was getting dark and Yukio was crying when this old lady saw us and asked what was wrong. Turned out we had walked quite far. She took us home to her place and gave us cookies while she phoned the monastery where we lived, then they called up dad on his cell, and in ten minutes he was there to pick us up." Rin snorted out a hearty laugh. "We didn't have any car: he'd been biking up and down every street in True Cross Town for an hour, looking for us. His cassock was bundled up in the bike basket and his shirt was soaked through with sweat, and this old lady…" He had to take a break to laugh properly. "This lady who'd been so sweet and kind to us completely _slaughters_ him for being an irresponsible father, like how _could_ he leave two toddlers without supervision like that, does he have _any_ idea what could have happened if we had been found by someone other than a nice old lady, a mother would _never_ have let anything like this happen to her children, and so on. He didn't get a word in edgewise – and dad could _really_ hold his own in a shouting match." Holding the memory in mind, Rin's smile softened around the edges. "It doesn't sound so amazing when you tell it like this but it was. It's the only time I've ever seen dad get told off like that. By this tiny little old lady no less."

No one at the picnic prompted him, but the story had lodged something in his throat that made him continue. His fingers rolled the glasses string like a rosary, counting beads as he related memory after memory, anecdote after anecdote about attempts at making birthday cakes, crayon drawings on the wallpaper, and that one time Rin beat up a kid in school because he said their dad wore a dress. It felt good – to remember. To share. And as he spoke it dawned on him that the price she'd asked wasn't a strange one at all: a treasure of memories for a treasure of crafts.

"Did you know my old man?" he asked, at the end of the long line of memories.

She had – she must have. When he asked there came a wistful look into her eyes, as of someone gazing at the past not knowing whether to be sad or happy about it.

"No. I don't believe I did." Whatever her eyes had seen they returned to the present with a smile, and she reached forward to gently ruffle his hair. "But he found a family, and fer that I'm glad; I know he is, too."

The response was as confusing as it was intriguing.

"Who are you…?"

"Okazaki Kasumi. Doesn't tell ya anything, does it? Doesn't need to." She glanced at the lake, and her smile widened. "I used ta come ta this lake with yer dad when we were young. Used ta make up names and stories fer it – he ate it up every time." The old woman chuckled softly to herself. "He could be quite the idiot, yer dad."

And she told them stories, crafted with the same care and expertise as the handicrafts on the picnic blanket. The shenanigans of a young Fujimoto Shiro filled their ears and hearts, filled the air with laughter and cast soft ripples over the water: ripples of things that happened long ago, as memories tread gently 'cross the surface of that hidden lake.

It is indeed a place for unexpected things.


	27. All I want for Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I wasn't in shape to write any Christmas special for 2016, my beta reader Fox kindly stepped in and made sure there is a (late) Christmas fic after all. And since it _does_ work as a kind of sneak preview of the not-yet-published Purgatorio arc, we thought we could put it here. :3

_So this is Christmas_  
_and what have you done_  
_another year over_  
_a new one just begun_

Shiro couldn't decide which was worse: the overly jolly Christmas songs that evoked images of big happy families enjoying a home-cooked dinner in a lavishly decorated house, or the ones that made you feel guilty for believing (wanting?) that fata morgana in the first place... and pointed you right back at the desert of your life.  
  
Well, his life, at least.  
  
Shiro didn't particularly care for Christmas – or any other holiday, for that matter. Ever since he became a priest, even the holidays weren't holidays anymore, but rather an evil scheme that forced him to try and cram even more hours of work into one day. While everybody else was enjoying some time off. Well, almost everybody. Of course there were others who got the heavy burden of care bestowed upon them. Doctors, in the first place. Firemen. Waitresses.  
  
Maybe the hard workers didn't miss out on all that much, though.  
  
Taking confessions had taught him there were a lot of people who only _pretended_ their Christmas was merry. Like, a LOT. Of people. Weary voices through the netting of the confessional spoke of feelings of guilt and anxiety, not meeting everyone's expectations.  
  
And these were just the previews. The real shitstorm wouldn't break loose until _after_ the holidays, when the parishioners would come scurrying in, seeking forgiveness for what they said – or just thought – when their patience, so devoutly saved up for the occasion, had run out, and all their misguided anticipation _exploded_ at that annoying uncle, that slow grandmother, that irresponsible sibling.  
  
"Can we _please_ put on another station?" He cast an urging glance at his colleague near the radio, but the young brown-haired priest on the ladder – what was his name again? Marco? Mario? – shook his head and shrugged.  
  
"It's the same on every channel." He sent a somewhat apologising smile in Shiro's direction. "Might be better to just try and get into the spirit of things – unless you prefer a double dosage of choir music this year. I think I could find Rai Classica–"  
  
"Never mind."  
  
He turned his back to Ma- Muh- ...whatever his name was, and stared at the floor tiles he was to mop. Get into the spirit of things, huh. Spirit of what, exactly? Cleaning? He frowned. _Five years into my professional career and I'm still being used as a bloody janitor._  
  
If this were the main hall of Saint Peter's basilica he could have understood – though he'd still wonder why they would ask an exorcist to do this kind of work. But no, the demons were keeping relatively quiet thus far and he had been asked to help out at one of the many monasteries of Rome, in light of the annual flood of pilgrims and tourists that liked to stay in an "appropriate" setting.  
  
Like those people would even notice a sparkling floor when they'd come in, hauling luggage and arguing which room belonged to whom while planning the rest of the evening as they went, dribbling mud and dirt all over the place again in a matter of seconds. In any case, just a quick sweep should suffice... But try telling that to the elders. Apparently, not just the actual devotees but even the part-time Christians who would come to church only one night a year were a big priority to them, and the entire Vatican needed to be spotless.

Of course, there would also be plenty of high-ranking officials of all sorts of organizations overflowing the city. Religious leaders, politicians, generals, foreign royalty and all that jazz – everyone and anyone who had something to gain by keeping the image of a decent, diligent, and above all, God-fearing individual intact.  
  
Himself not excluded.  
  
The thought was as bitter on his tongue as it was to his mind; he would have spat on the floor if it wouldn't have been so counter-productive. And if he wouldn't have felt the eyes of that statue of the virgin Mary burning into his back as he continued his work.

_And, so this is Christmas  
For weak and for strong  
For rich and the poor ones  
The world is so wrong_

You said it, John. You said it.

Ironically, the only other person not really hiding his dislike for the part he was forced to play, normally very much enjoyed Christmas. He just didn't really enjoy the whole Christ aspect of it. Nor the mass.  
  
In fact, his preferred form of Christmas was that of decorating trees, eating sweets and making merry. Gathering around to listen to someone telling a story – fine. Singing songs – fine.  
  
But all this sitting quietly, reminiscing the same old fairytale year after year... It's one thing to take the past into account when planning one's future, but another thing entirely to let it dull the present so much – a terrible waste of time, that's what it was. Especially with festivities going on in so many other parts of the world. Organ music and choir song, beautiful as they could be, weren't very suitable for dancing, and one needed more than just a sip of wine and a tiny cracker to throw a good party.  
  
Silent night, holy night. Pfah! Bonfires and blood, meat and merry – Yule. Now that was a celebration worth the name.

Unfortunately, due to his role as a Branch Director, Mephisto often found himself in a position where he simply couldn't refuse a direct invitation to the midnight mass on Christmas Eve... And orchestrating a minor catastrophe to give himself a good excuse not to come wasn't something he could do every year. Not without rousing suspicion. Especially since the entire Order knew he loathed it: over time it had grown into a sport to immerse him in this lavish charade for as long as possible.  
  
Of course, it could still be good fun to remind a bunch of rusty, straight-laced clerics how deliciously Pagan the origin of some of their traditions and decorations really where… But it didn't change the ceremonies he was forced to attend, and his glee usually evaporated once they began. One can only endure so much singalong fanfiction of his arch rival.  
  
Torn between his gentlemanly façade that forbade him to scoff, and the growing childish need to stick out his tongue to some of the cherubs, Mephisto clenched his jaw and tried to distract himself by imagining what other purposes a majestic hall of these proportions could have been used for – the more clashing with the current one, the better. The many scantily clad fresco figures on the ceiling and the fact that the famous baldacchino looked an awful lot like a giant four-poster bed helped.  
  
In a way. In another way it caused him discomfort of a different kind, which he would rather not want the people next to him to notice... Better abandon that train of thought.  
  
His eyes drifted to the Latin words written on the large gold band that wrapped the walls of the dome: Et tibi claves regni caelorum. And you I will give the keys to the kingdom of Heaven.  
  
"And whatever you bind on Earth..." He sighed. Bound. That was the word.  
  
The lines of people rose for the umpteenth time to participate in a hymn, and Mephisto stood up along with them – but remained quiet. There was a limit to how much he would be humiliated. Surely, no-one would blame him. And if they did, he would have the pleasure of arguing that a demon singing words he did not mean, lying in the very house of God, in the presence of the Pope, would be be far worse a sin than his lack of participation.  
  
They sat down again.  
  
Fighting the urge to tap his foot or drum his fingers, the demon cast a longing glance at the night sky visible through windows high up in the small cupolas. Just forty-eight more minutes. Thirty-three, if he managed to slip out when everybody else lined up for communion.  
  
Sit, stand, sing, sit, stand, sing... Good boy, have a cookie. And people wondered why he assumed the form of a lap dog. No sense of humour. None of them.  
  
Well... Almost none of them.

A tingle in the back of his mind spoke of a familiar soul, a small blip on his radar. A few rows behind him, all the way to the side. Of course. Strategic positioning for the chronically late – which he undoubtedly had been, even if he was ranked high enough to have a seat reserved for him. Strategic also in the sense of overview, just in case there actually would be a demon stupid enough to venture into the Church of churches of his own free will. Or if someone would call upon him to deal with whatever emergency had arisen elsewhere.  
  
He had tried to reach out, tried to assert the state of the man's heart, scan and see if he was just as bored: but the reception was blurry, the image distorted due to all the euphoric spirits around them. Emotions were running high – and not in the useful sense. Hope, determination and devotion all around, with only minor specks of discomfort blotting the overall glow of the crowd. Unity. Ugh.  
Just forty-five more minutes...

"Finally!" Mephisto breathed the moment they set foot on the plaza outside. Without saying a word, the exorcist next to him pulled a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket, picked one out, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it up: a single, smooth move, as accustomed as drawing a gun and firing.  
  
Inhaled...  
  
Savoured it...  
  
and heaved out a heavy waft of smoke, in a similar, silent gesture of relief.  
  
Mephisto crinkled his nose. From one annoyance to another. But at least his companion was considerate enough to not blow any smoke in his direction.  
  
He hooked his arm through the other's and tried to pull him towards the centre of the plaza. "Let's go look at the tree!"  
  
No cooperation. "...Why? I can see it just fine from here – it's huge."  
  
"It's the first year they put one up, and now that the masses are dispersing we can finally get close without too much trouble. Come on~"  
  
Mephisto zig-zagged through the crowds, dragging along the sullen priest until they reached the rope fence set up around the gigantic fir. Swiss guards stood vigil in case anyone showed violent intent towards this piece of heathen Germanic tradition in the heart of Catholicism, but a few odd looks aside, no-one seemed to protest. On the contrary, many people, most of them with children, gathered around the novelty to admire the hundreds of lights that were draped around it.  
  
Shiro had to admit that it was a good addition to all the stone that surrounded them: he always thought the city could use some more green. Actual green, not just flowers in pots hanging from window sills. Still, for Mephisto to get so disproportionally enthusiastic about a tree... It wasn't like there were presents for him underneath. Maybe this was the relapse of having to sit through two hours of Christian worship?  
  
Force of habit made him turn to observe the people around them – and their reactions. There was always a throng of people gathered for mass, young and old and even older- Some so ancient you could call it a Christmas miracle that they could transport themselves all the way to Saint Peter's. The youngest had to be held up to see the tree, unless they were lucky enough to make it to the rope fence. Or they could do like one father who had hoisted his kid up to sit on his shoulders. Through the trail of smoke Shiro could see the electric lights reflected in the big, round eyes of the boy. He couldn't be older than six: mouth slightly open, cheeks rosy from the cold – they must have followed the entire ceremony from outside. The child's entire face radiated joy and wonder, and his father seemed tired, but satisfied with the heavy weight on top of him. Next to him was a woman, probably his wife, who tried to shush a fidgeting little girl in rapid Italian, telling her that no, she couldn't climb it, now behave young lady, or La Befana would not get her that skipping rope she wanted.  
  
It seemed endearing. Should be endearing. Was endearing – or so Shiro's brain told him. Yet for some reason, the rest of his body seemed to disagree. It was an uneasy, slightly nauseating feeling that crept up from his stomach and into his throat; he turned his head before it could make its way to his eyes.  
  
Mephisto was still staring at the lights. No- wait- was he? Shiro squinted. The principal also appeared to have some kind of communication issues between mind and chassis, judging by the way his pupils somehow seemed to have sunken deep into his skull, the radiant lime of his irises dimmed to a forest green as his gaze wandered somewhere far beyond the bright lights.

"Yo." Shiro nudged his shoulder. "I'm going home."  
  
"-Hah?" The demon tore his attention away from the tree. "Already? We're finally off duty – I thought we could go have a drink?"  
  
" _You_ might be off-duty. They called _me_ to be on support patrol until 3 am, and tomorrow I'm expected to help out with security during the Urbi et Orbi."  
  
"How about lunch afterwards, then? We could go to the Christmas fair at Piazza Navona–"  
  
"Mmyeah, I'd rather not."  
  
The tips of his ears dropped instantly. At the same time, his irked-o-meter shot up all the way to the top of the Christmas tree.  
  
"Is that so? And is there perhaps a reason _why_ you are being even more insolent than usual?"  
  
Oh joy.  
  
"Dunno, maybe because even after working my ass off for four weeks straight in preparation of all this bullshit, my boss is still expecting me to spend whatever tiny scrap of free time and energy I have left on _him_ , and turns into a whining little brat the moment I don't immediately go along with his plans?"  
  
"Ah, so now I'm suddenly your boss?"  
  
"You mean you aren't?"  
  
"Technically, no. You may still be a member of the Japanese branch by nationality, but currently, all your missions are being coordinated by the Italian director."  
  
"This is one of those _technicalities_ that you'd turn the other way around in an instant if it supported your argument, isn't it?"  
  
"It would make no sense to argue against myself, would it? Your point being?"  
  
"That you're never satisfied, and arguing is useless anyway." He plucked the cigarette butt from the corner of his mouth, and flicked it past Mephisto. "I'm gonna go home, pick up my stuff, and get back out. You can do whatever the hell you want." He turned around and stuffed his hands down his pockets.  
  
Don't look back. Don't say anything. Simply take off. Keep walking. Be as stone-faced, stone-hearted and just as plain dumb boring as possible, and Prissy Longstocking would lose interest.  
  
...Maybe that would work for that other bothering thing too, gnawing at his chest.

_And so this is Christmas  
I hope you have fun  
The near and the dear one  
The old and the young_

"This is Bravo Alpha Kilo Alpha, calling Yankee Alpha Bravo Oscar. Come in, Yankee. Over."  
  
_Oh for the love of God._  
  
"Yankee here. Still no sign of agent Red Nose? Over."  
  
_Just how long was he going to keep this up?  
  
_ "Negative. How long until Elf Force One was supposed to land? Over."  
  
_Honestly, how juvenile can you be..._  
  
"Red Nose might have been compromised. Keep an eye out for agent Prancer."  
  
"WOULD YOU STOP MESSING WITH MY WALKIE-TALKIES ALREADY?!" Shiro tried to swat the devices out of Mephisto's claws, but the demon vanished in a cloud of pink smoke, couch and all, and re-appeared on his other side, steering around the walkie-talkies to float above his head like paper air planes. Asshole. Just look at that smug face.  
  
Should have taken the time to clear out his bag and just bring one communicator, instead of dragging along those for the whole team.  
  
Trying to shrug off his irritation, the exorcist re-assumed his observing position. Not that laying flat on his belly would really help him not to get noticed, now that there was a horrible, pink-and-purple baroque couch with an equally horrible demon on it hovering next to him.  
  
Whatever. When you couldn't get rid of him you had to opt for the second best option – which would have been to put a bullet in his knee, but since that wasn't possible either Shiro had to make do with denying him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him. Let him be a cunt, and just ignore him.

In hindsight, it was his own fault. Kinda. Telling _any_ demon they could do whatever the hell they wanted was a tremendously bad idea: telling _Mephisto_ was something you only did when four weeks of intense work had hollowed out your brain like Swiss cheese. Still, why on Earth he chose to camp out on a freezing hilltop instead of just curling up in his cushion nest at home, watching anime, was beyond Shiro.  
  
One of the walkie-talkies made a looping in front of his binoculars, and started a dog fight with the other one around his head.  
  
_Motherfff–_  
  
"Why are you even here?"  
  
"The question is, why are you?" the demon countered easily, gesturing with his hand – and the walkie-talkies – at the scenery. "There's nothing worth hunting here – nothing that would pose a threat to that precious ceremony tomorrow. Nothing but some very low-level apparitions within a ten mile radius. These hills have been combed through for weeks: what's left is no more troublesome than coal tar." He cast a bored glance at the man below him. "Surely even you can sense it."  
  
Shiro groaned.  
  
Of course he was right – these past few days had been nothing but pointless, repetitive tasks that only served to soothe the nerves of the higher-ups. Only when everything was being double, triple, quadruple checked could they convince themselves they had everything under control. Understandable, given the amount of people they felt responsible for. Understandable, but unnecessary. And un-wise. It would be far better if the crew taking care of it all was well-rested, rather than cranked up on coffee because they had to do rounds until a few hours before the big event.  
  
Not that he was going to admit to that pink-clad pest above him that he was _right_. Contrary to popular belief, he had some sense of self-preservation.  
  
"So you're suggesting I just abandon post? If I were to do that on a mission _you_ sent me on, you'd have my hide the second you found out. Also, you're avoiding the question. Why. Are. You here." He turned over, leaning on one elbow so he could look the demon in the eye. "I know you hate cold. Why do you even care if I'm out here or not – do you really not have anything better to do?"  
  
"I loathe stupidity, for one thing, and would rather not see one of my exorcists die of hypothermia when it's completely avoidable."  
  
"So now I'm _your_ exorcist again?" Shiro grinned. "Turning technicalities around when it pleases you, just like I said."  
  
"That you did, and I thought it would be a shame to disappoint you." The demon smiled with venomous politeness.  
  
Silence.  
  
Shiro studied the smile. Mephisto seemed... off. Angry? Not really... Frustrated, more like. Not getting what he wanted. But what he actually wanted, he didn't make clear. As always. Shiro tilted his head. Straight-out asking would only cause the demon to avoid the subject even further. How to deal with this... Well there were only two options, really. Carrot or stick. Teasing it out of him could work; it could also blow up in his face. Mephisto was piqued, and, as such, unpredictable.  
  
But life had been a bitch to him all day, and what better person to dump a surplus of bitchiness on?  
  
"How about you get us some hot cocoa, then? Since you're such a concerned employer?"  
  
Hah. Now there was a nice expression. Shiro tried his darnedest to keep his own features straight. The befuddlement on Mephisto's face was just too good. He _had_ suggested they'd go out for a drink. He _had_ voiced his opinion about the temperature. He _had_ called the exorcist his employee. But now said employee treated him like some kind of errand boy. Was this a win or not?  
  
Thin eyebrows knotted together above the reptilian eyes. Cheeky little lion. But a lion that was still playing. Hmm~ to sacrifice a turn in the hope the game would continue? Or could he make it last, even if he didn't go along?  
  
A glint in the eyes behind the glasses. A glint a bit too similar to some of the other ones he had seen today, being told to sit, stand, sing... fetch?  
  
His eyes flared up like fireflies on steroids.  
  
"Splendid idea. I'll go get some." And with that, he was gone. And so was the magic keeping the walkie-talkies in place above Shiro's head.  
  
"Hey– Ow!"

* * *

  
Shiro hadn't _really_ expected Mephisto to return after his exit last night. Still, he had lingered on that hilltop just a little longer than he normally would have done. Just because he couldn't get the binoculars to fit into his bag properly, of course.

Saint Peter's square was packed to the brim.  
  
From his seat in the high window, he idly scanned the masses like one would do with a garden: See if there are any weeds growing where they shouldn't, ready to take them out if one popped up. A few times his hands had gripped the rifle on his lap a bit more tightly, but they were only camera flashes, nothing demonic. He rolled his shoulders. The long hours, lack of sleep and the cold were beginning to catch up with him, and stiffness would jeopardize his aim. Not that it really seemed anything would happen. He yawned. Bits and pieces of the speech of pope John Paul the second ricochetted between the colonnades and drifted in his direction.  
  
"To redeem means to restore at the same time, from man to God and from God to man. Redeem also means to restore man to himself – for what is man but the image and likeness of God, and for precisely this reason, he is man."  
  
Redemption, huh. _I can name you one dude that has some redeeming to do_.  
  
He rubbed the bump on his head where the walkie-talkies had landed. Caused by what _looked_ like a man. If you squinted. And ignored the stockings. He smirked. A likeness of a likeness – like Chinese whispers, each imitation moving further away from the original.  
  
"To all our brethren, with whom we aspire unity of faith in the church of Christ–"  
  
He didn't feel particularly brotherly with the other priests. Well, at least he had some brothers in arms. Kind of. He looked across the square, where a beam of sunlight had broken through the cloud and reflected off the weapon of one of the other members in Golem's bunch of renegades.  
  
"In this mystery we are united to every man, and to all men, because the Redemption was accomplished for all, and embraces all without distinction-"  
  
If they were all redeemed anyway, then what's the point of confessing? Or apologising? Shiro sighed. Mystery indeed.  
  
"We wish that the light of this night may come, particularly, to those who suffer, wherever they are on this earth, and whatever their misfortune–"  
  
Did annoying demon bosses count?  
  
"God takes human suffering with the birth of Christ–"  
  
Seriously, what the hell was up with the guy – first he gets all doe-eyed at a stupid tree, then he wouldn't leave him alone... What happened to his usual business attitude?  
  
"-which is the beginning of his Cross and glorification."  
  
A well-behaved applause briefly echoed over the plaza. Still no weeds. None.  
  
...He hadn't shown himself all day. Shiro would have welcomed that as a blessing if not for the nagging feeling that something was off. He had half-expected the demon to give that lunch proposal another go. Heavens knew why he was so keen on spending time together, today of all days. If he needed him for some clandestine mission he wouldn't have beat around the bush so much. And visiting a Christmas fair? You'd expect a demon to hiss at anything Jesus-related, and it wasn't like he couldn't get candy or entertainment elsewhere – hell, he had a theme park in his own back yard! Completely Jesus-free!

Shiro's attention was drawn back to the speech when the Pope started the usual list of well-wishes in different languages, and German passed by.  
  
"...Ihnen allen ein gnadenreiches, schönes und frohes Weihnachtsfest."  
  
The Pope closed with a more personal note to the people of Poland, his homeland behind the Wall, and the hardships of being separated from loved ones and homestead, before the usual end of ceremony was set in.  
  
Swiss guard, ensemble playing, waving and applause... Shiro didn't really register any of it anymore. The plaza, the sounds... They all faded away into an unfocused blob. A blob that warped and transformed and presented him with a different crowd, different season, different traditions. A festival he never got to partake in, didn't even get caught up the preparations for. Where the processions where much less formal, the colours much brighter and the people much merrier. Lanterns, and balloons! And food and music and friends and–  
  
Somewhere in the far depths of his mind, something stirred. Similar to the uneasy feeling under the tree, yesterday, but not quite. There was an addition to it. Something new. Like trying to recall a word. You know you know it, but still it somehow stays just outside of reach, hiding behind the curtains in the back of your head like a little yōsei, giggling at you while you keep searching for it.  
  
He rubbed his knuckles over his forehead, lightly knocking in the hope the thought would fall out. But the cold seemed to have frozen it stuck to his skull, leaving only little parts that came off ringing in his ears while he removed the ammunition from his rifle, packed up his gear and started walking home on auto-pilot.

Leave room. Accept thanks from cleric. Say he's welcome. Yes. Merry Christmas to you too.  
  
_Tree._  
  
Stairs. Go down. Find exit. Go home.  
  
_Home.  
  
_ Open door. Person. Step aside. Say hi. _  
  
Eyes.  
  
_Cross road. Wait for green light.  
  
_Lights_.  
  
Walk. People. Noise. Bar.  
  
_Drinks._  
  
Foreign language. Tourists.  
  
_Foreign._  
  
He stopped. Slapped his forehead. And with that last hit the thought finally came out in its entirety. Like an avalanche.  
  
Of _course_.  
  
Every bit as forced to play a part as he was. Every bit as cut off. Stranded in an environment that didn't fit him. No-one to connect with. But it couldn't be– And even if it was– But he was a demon – and an asshole – why should he even care–  
  
_Christmas_.  
  
Shiro gritted his teeth. Not fair. Bloody Christian morals, bloody Pope and his bloody speech.  
  
_Do you really not have anything better to do~_ Now his own words turned against him. Great. Just great.  
  
He did have something better to do – go home and sleep. Alone. And let Mephisto mope. Also alone.  
  
He stared blindly at the bar. Fragments of talk, laughter and melody creeped through the framework of the door.

_And the windy winter avenues  
Just don't seem the same,  
And the Christmas carols sound like blues,  
But the choir is not to blame _

Screw it.  
  
He dug into his pockets. Key. Door. Now. Before common sense could catch up with his actions.

The one who opened the door was Belial, of course. He seemed mildly surprised at the sight of the exorcist – even if that was hard to tell. It appeared not a single muscle had moved in his face for the past five years.  
  
"Fujimoto-san. It's been a whi–"  
  
"Yeahyeah cut the crap: is he home?"  
  
"I'm afraid his highness doesn't want to be disturbed–"  
  
"Well that's rich, when he's the one that started the disturbing." He shoved the butler aside and marched in. "Bedroom, I take it?" He halted. Hadn't considered that possibility. It was unlikely, but you never knew. Holidays. Maybe, after he pissed the demon off last night... Sheepishly, he looked at Belial. "He doesn't have... guests... over, does he?"  
  
One eyebrow rose maybe a millimetre in response. "Not to my knowledge, but–"  
  
"Good." He turned around and strode down the hallway. "Oh, and for the record, he sort of invited me. So you can quit fussing and if he starts nagging you, you can just blame me." _That's what everybody always does, anyways._

He still knocked. Just in case.  
  
Silence – but he was definitely in there. Shiro could feel his presence through the wood, as well as the tiny twitch in the wavelength when he knocked – just like the ones that would ripple through his ears or hair curl when he picked up on something. Which meant Mephisto knew it was him, and was just being a twat for theatrics' sake. Shiro wondered if the demon could sense him rolling his eyes. Fine. He'd wait. Let the princess be petty if he needs it so much.  
  
"...Come in." At last. He pushed the door open.  
  
"Hi. Does the offer for drinks still stand?"  
  
No reaction. Shiro stayed in the door opening, leaning one arm against the frame, waiting for the demon to make up his mind. Cuddled up in his cushion nest with a bunch of snacks and not even granting the exorcist a look. Diva. He already started to regret his decision of coming here.  
  
"A bit early for you, isn't it?" Still not looking, but Shiro's watch detached itself from his wrist and hovered in front of his face, showing him the time in Italy.  
  
"It's past noon. Good enough." He snatched the watch out of the air and put it back on. "And if not: You also suggested lunch."  
  
"Already had dinner, thank you."  
  
The exorcist suppressed a sigh. He had a nagging feeling his guardian angel – if that slacker even existed – was raising his hands to Heaven and asking him why, why had he ever thought this was a good idea. Shiro ignored it. He was here now, better make something of it. Or he'd go home feeling even worse. He assumed a comfortable slouch against the door frame, and studied the back of the principal's head. There was no movement, except his ears were perked up. He was paying attention, waiting for his next move – while maintaining a poker face, as usual.  
  
Carrot approach this time. Definitely.  
  
"How about hot chocolate?" He hesitated. Too much, or..? Fuck it. He was too worn out to let the play drag on any longer. "...My treat."  
  
That did the trick. Mephisto's silhouette was no longer a straight line of defence. Instead, everything twisted: He turned around in his bean bag to face the exorcist, dragging his knees up to his chest and sliding his elbow over the back of his seat, bringing his hands together and slowly folding his fingers. The corners of his mouth curled upwards, revealing the tips of his fangs, and Shiro could swear the ahoge coiled in on itself.  
  
Shiro huffed. "Wipe that smug grin off your face. Just one drink, and then I'll go home. I'm way too tired." He pointed an index finger at the demon, who elegantly rose from his nest and poofed himself from a baby blue yukata into a white suit. "And I get to decide where. I'm not paying for some fancy-ass five-star cocoa when you can get a perfectly good one at any café."

Easier said than done. Shiro didn't care much for sweet stuff, and had to admit he had no clue where in True Cross Town they'd serve good hot chocolate. With whipped cream – the demon had been adamant about that. Most lunch rooms were closed by now, and the only spots he could think of were some fancy restaurants, the kinds where you'd go on a date. To be spotted there with Mephisto was– No.  
  
With the demon's suggestion for the Piazza Navona in mind, they went back to Rome with the aid of one of his magic keys. But the market was closed on Christmas Day, and every bar, café or restaurant they passed was either not open yet, or completely full. Even the ice cream shops. Shiro had a vivid mental image of his guardian angel sarcastically applauding him as they sauntered through the empty streets. An odd role-reversal, since the demon next to him had remained in high spirits this whole time... Making the exorcist feel weirdly guilty. He told himself he didn't have to, moreover, that it didn't make a lick of sense- probably the only reason Mephisto was so happy, was because he won their stupid bantering.

They made a turn at Via del Mascherino, passing under the massive wall and ended up facing the colonnades of Saint Peter's square again- and Shiro threw his arms in the air before sitting down on the steps surrounding the plaza, like depressing serpentines following his descent of defeat.  
  
"I give up." He let his hands slap down onto his upper legs. "I tried. I'm sorry." He turned his head towards the massive tree, next to the obelisk. If only to avoid Mephisto's eyes.  
  
_And here comes the sulk... any second now..._  
  
But the sulk didn't come, and he turned back.  
  
The demon was staring straight ahead, also at the tree. And yet not at the tree.  
  
That look again. So far away. But a bit different this time: below the surface, an Idea welled up, filling his head, brightening his entire face. And when the eyes moved to Shiro, the green irises were anything but dull.  
  
"How is your stomach right now?"  
  
What?  
  
"Uh... Empty?"  
  
"Excellent!" The demon hoisted him up, grabbed his shoulders and held him at arm's length with a maniacal grin that grew wider by the second. "I know just where to go."  
  
One hand let go, three fingers lifted–  
  
"No don–!"  
*poof*

Like being turned inside out, dissolved, re-assembled and squeezed through a tube at the same time. Shiro swayed and instinctively grabbed onto the nearest object to stay on his feet.  
  
"Bwueh–"  
  
"Gargl–!"  
  
Unfortunately, the nearest object was the end of Mephisto's horrid scarf – which not only utterly failed to serve as a solid anchoring point for the dizzy exorcist, but almost pulled the demon over as well.  
  
White. Lots of white. Not Mephisto. Freezing cold. ...Moist. Shiro pushed himself up and scurried to his feet, took off his glasses and shook himself like a wet dog. "Pfuah! What the– I asked you time and time again not to DO that! At least not without warning!" He rubbed a hand over his face and started brushing snow off his glasses.  
  
"And that makes it acceptable to strangle me?!" The principal tugged at his tightly-wound accessory, twisting and bending his neck in order to make room.  
  
"I didn't do it on purpose!" _This time_.  
  
Patting the snow off his coat, he looked around. They stood in the middle of a small square, right in front of a small statue of a boy with a flute, and two high trees. Surrounded by weird, crooked houses that looked like someone with a tangram obsession built them. The walls were all assembled of dark, wooden bars with square and triangular bits of plaster in between. "Where are we?"  
  
"Strasbourg."  
  
"Germany?"  
  
"France – currently, at least. The ownership of this region has shifted many times, so I can't really reprimand your lack of geographical knowledge." The irritation had slid off his features, and a forlorn smile took its place. "It certainly still feels Germanic to me."  
  
Surprised, Shiro turned his head. "You've been here before?"  
  
"A long time ago." The demon looked ahead. Again – that gaze. But not as far away. And slightly... happier? Softer, somehow. Shiro stared. It was many years since he'd last seen that expression on his face. Perhaps Mephisto realised it himself, or just noticed his staring... because the next instant, it was gone – and replaced with the toothy grin from before.  
  
"Now then, shall we?" He held out an arm for the exorcist to take.  
  
"Yeah, no." Shiro gently pushed back the elbow. "I've found my balance now, thanks. And why are we here?"  
  
"Why, for heiße Schokolade, of course!"  
  
"For what?"  
  
The demon cast his eyes to the darkening sky. "Hot chocolate. Cocoa, sugar, and heated milk. And whipped cream." The eyes returned to earth with an extra spark in them. "And Kugelhopf! Or maybe Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte–"  
  
"Are we still talking about drinks? Or are those some weird sex positions?" Knowing Mephisto it could be either; Mephisto himself, however, was giving him a most reprimanding look. "What? I'm supposed to think you're this excited about something completely harmless?"  
  
A groan, but not without the hint of a chuckle to it. "...Cake. Let's get some hot chocolate, and cake."

Hooking one gloved finger through the gap between his coat buttons, he started pulling the exorcist to one of the narrow streets.  
  
Shiro was forced to assume somewhat of a trot to keep up with the long legs stalking ahead. And not slip on the snowy cobblestones again.  
  
"Won't we run into the same issue here? I mean, everything being full and all? And if you haven't been here for I-don't-know-how-long, would you even know where to find it?"  
  
"It's Christmas – have some faith, Father Fujimoto!" The demon winked over his shoulder. "The order in which the stalls are placed may have changed, but they all have remained in the same location for centuries~"  
  
"Stalls?"  
  
"Of the Weihnachtsmarkt!"  
  
"Of the wha–? You know, I'm just gonna stop asking..."

The deeper they moved into what was probably the city's centre, the more energy the demon seemed to gain. Smoothly navigating through the increasing amount of people, he dragged the exorcist along like a hyper-active puppy pulling his owner by the leash. By the time Shiro started to wonder if there was actually an end to the long, old street, Mephisto's enthusiasm was almost tangible. Any moment now he'd start glowing. They had to slow down just a little bit when the masses suddenly became much more dense. Shiro, who until then had mainly focused on not tripping or bumping into anyone, finally got the chance to look around a bit more, and saw they had reached a much bigger square, next to an enormous church. No, not church. Cathedral.  
  
He might not have been the most religious priest to walk the earth, but even he felt his jaw slightly drop before he could catch it. It wasn't the size – Rome was full of big buildings, and the Academy was more mountain than building. But the _sheer amount_ of decorations... Contrary to the massive, bulky shapes and smooth surfaces he was used to, Strasbourg's cathedral seemed like... Well, nothing he had seen in person, but he could chance a guess that the Hindu temples Inderpreet had told him about looked something like this. Or maybe if you crammed the whole of True Cross Town into the shape of just one big church, rather than letting it be a hill of its own…  
  
The snow made it look like the cathedral had lace draped over the large, spiky crystals reaching into the sky... Skeletal and eroded. He had seen smaller parishes in that style, but this... This was gigantic. And contrary to the ones he'd seen... This was old. Genuinely old, not just made to look like it.  
  
Old, just like the last time he had seen that look cross Mephisto's features.  
  
Shiro took a chance leaning backwards – the demon was still holding on to his coat, and his scarf prevented him from bending his neck all the way to look up at the tower. It might have even been higher than the dome of Saint Peter's. And nearly every single centimetre was covered in tiny statues, ornamental curls and bas-reliefs. And then there were those immense doors and huge stained glass windows...  
  
"Quite something, yes?" Mephisto's voice made him snap back. The demon's glimmering eyes were observing his admiration with approval. "But I found something else that might be of interest: that stand over there sells hot beverages." He pointed to a spot a few metres away, over a few heads. It was only now that Shiro realised this must be the Whynag– Wideneck– that German thing with stalls the demon had been yapping about. Because of the crowds and the cathedral he hadn't noticed they had somehow ventured into what he imagined Disneyland to look like. At Christmas.

Lights. So many lights. Really, every single little thing you could possibly get some electric lights or candles in, on, between or around seemed to have been given just that. And everything else was covered in pine branches, straw, ribbons and bows. So many bows. And glitter. So much glitter. Under any other circumstances, Shiro would have cringed. But in the current quantities it was simply so overwhelming, the only response his brain could come up with was laugh.  
  
Laugh at the insane amount of utterly useless trinkets being sold everywhere, laugh at his tiredness, laugh at the fact that he didn't bring a hat when it started snowing, laugh at the various terrible Christmas songs that sounded from the speakers in the stalls, laugh at Mephisto who was almost _skipping_ when the vendor handed him his chocolate. _With_ whipped cream, of course.

His laughter died down when the vendor kept staring at him. Shiro frowned. Okay, maybe they didn't see a lot of Asian people around here either, but staring was still rude. The man gave him a puzzled look, said something in an encouraging tone, gestured... And a sudden, silent panic hit Shiro.

Money.  
  
Fuck.  
  
He'd said he'd pay for the chocolate, back in Faust mansion. With every intention of doing so – in True Cross Town or Rome. In coin he had on him. Lire and yen. He had never even seen a franc with his own two eyes, let alone had any in his wallet.  
  
_Run_ , the first voice in his head said – one that sounded an awful lot like his teenage self. _Don't: you'll be stuck in fucking_ France, said his slower, but much smarter voice. _His fault,_ a third voice added.  
  
He caught Mephisto's eyes over the cup he was clasping with both hands. Seeing his alarm, the demon lowered his drink, and bounced his glance back and forth between the vendor and the priest, like following a tennis match, before understanding the situation. When he did, his shoulders dropped and he tilted his head with an unimpressed eyebrow raised. His dear employee seemed equal parts embarrassed and annoyed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and avoiding his gaze... Trying to disappear into his scarf.  
  
He looked like a child forced to apologise for bad behaviour... and _adorable_.  
  
A helpless snickering bubbled up from his stomach, and he had to put the cup on the counter in order not to spill anything.  
  
"Ha ha, really funny! Don't just stand there – do something!" Shiro growled at the hiccuping demon.  
  
"Fufufu – some host you are, inviting someone only to treat _you_ to a round of drinks~"  
  
"Oi, it was you who suddenly decided to drag me over here! That wasn't part of the deal!"  
  
"Heeheehee~" Mephisto wiped the corners of his eyes. "My bad, my bad – perhaps I should have put up a contract detailing the agreement…?"  
  
He shot a sly grin at the exorcist, who grew increasingly furious – and increasingly funny, with shoulders tensing up until only his nose peeked out from over the scarf.  
  
"Listen here, you–" Shiro started, clenching his left hand into a fist, when his vision suddenly turned white a second time. Cold glasses, hot breath – scarf. Shiro instantly froze in his engaging position, and the demon lost it. Hanging over the counter, hooting with laughter, while Shiro felt his entire face heat up to the point his hair could have caught fire. _Oh you bloody- fucking- little-!_  
  
He roughly snagged off his glasses and opened his mouth for a second attempt of giving the bastard a piece of his mind... But then he saw the chuckling, now blurry figure reach into his pocket and pull out a square... thing.  
  
Wallet.  
  
Still trembling, Mephisto reached into his space-bent wallet and dug out some foreign paper notes that he giddily handed over to the discontented vendor, who grunted something of a thank you before stomping over to the cash register.  
  
Shiro's anger slid off his back as he watched Mephisto accept his change back, slightly giggling.  
  
"...How come you just happen to have the right currency on you? I thought you hadn't been here for a while?"  
  
The demon cast him a sideways smirk. "I'm always prepared." He picked up his drink, superbly unbothered. The grin grew wider. "Eons of experience in spontaneous travel."  
  
Shiro felt his cheek twitch.  
  
Again.  
  
All the tension left his shoulders, and he snorted. "Should have fuckin' known..."  
  
"Language, priest-san." But there was amusement in his voice.  
  
Shiro grinned as he turned to the counter, putting his glasses back on to study the menu. "My sincerest apologies." Couldn't be more insincere.  
  
"Can I borrow some off you? If they have something besides liquid candy I'd like a drink as well."  
  
"Hmm~" The demon looked around, then nodded to a stand a few lines away. "Have you ever tried Glühwein?"

_Here were are as in olden days  
happy golden days of yore  
Faithful friends who are dear to us  
gather near to us once more _

"Welll~?"  
  
"You look ridiculous."  
  
"That's what you say of my everyday garb as well."  
  
"Because it's true."  
  
Shiro eyed the demon with a grin from ear to ear. When they had passed by a booth selling winter accessories, Mephisto, in his never-ending concern for his employee's well-being, had insisted the exorcist needed something to protect his head from the cold, and pushed him to buy a knitted hat. "Pushed" meaning using him as his personal dress-up doll, forcing on one hat after the other until static electricity almost fried his ears, whereupon Shiro had decided the demon could do with another scarf. Or ten. Each more tightly wound than its predecessor, until he became so top-heavy he almost keeled over, and the old lady that owned the store began to give them very chastising looks.

They had since then moved on to her neighbour, who sold more modern, festive headgear. Shiro now sported felted reindeer antlers, and Mephisto was equipped with the fluffiest, pinkest ear-warmers the world had ever seen. Half the faux fur consisted out of silver tinsel, but that wasn't enough glitter for his majesty – he had tied some silver hair ribbons into two little bows on each side, and Shiro had helpfully put one of the matching mittens over his hair curl so it wouldn't get cold. The furry monstrosity flopped its empty thumb from side to side as the demon modelled, making slow pirouettes in front of the exorcist.  
  
Shiro hid his face in his palm, snickering giddily.  
  
They had started out normal enough – chocolate, mulled wine, Mephisto giving history lessons about the house on the corner (apparently it was built in 1427), Mephisto fangirling at the astronomical clock inside the Cathedral (which, admittedly, was really cool)... Mephisto musing about stealing the mechanical rooster on top to use as an alarm clock.  
  
Actually, now that he thought about it, that was probably when things started to go overboard and the original plan of just one drink before going home was completely abandoned. Though maybe it already was when they teleported here in the first place.

They were now three drinks and a various array of snacks further, and the vendors started packing up.  
  
Shiro took off the antlers – despite Mephisto's whiny noises to keep them – and looked around the plaza. The dark had fully set in a few hours ago, and the snowfall was becoming more steady. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, while Mephisto handed over some money for the ear warmers to the woman behind the counter. Looking ridiculous had never stopped him from wearing what he liked – though he had discarded the mitten.  
  
"So, where would you like to go now?" The demon came prancing over to him.  
  
"Actually... it's about time to go home, don't you think?" He cautiously glanced up. "Everybody else seems to do so – and frankly, I'm getting kind of cold."  
  
"You wouldn't be if you had bought that hat I recommended." Mephisto frowned, and Shiro sighed.  
  
"Like I was ever gonna wear that. Can you just picture me going on missions, sneaking through the bushes with that stupid pom-pom on my head?"  
  
"It was cute!"  
  
"It was impractical."  
  
Shiro crossed his arms. "Come on – haven't you had enough already?"  
  
Dipped ears and a pouting face. Nope, clearly not. Stupid question. _When has that guy ever had enough of anything_?  
  
Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look – I get it, really. But I'm tired, and cold, and I just wanna go home, eat some dinner, take a shower, and sleep."  
  
"Dinner?"  
  
He sounded surprised. Shiro looked up.  
  
"Well yeah. I've only had some cake and half a brizzle–"  
  
"Brezel."  
  
"Yeah, that. I could do with an actual meal. I've been working and walking all day, you know."  
  
The demon stroked his beard in thought, and Considered.  
  
"How about that, then." He looked down at the exorcist, and smiled. An actual smile, not a grin. "A proper meal. My treat."  
  
Shiro gawked. Mephisto offering to pay for something. Now there was something you didn't see every day. Sure, he had paid for the snacks and drinks thus far, but made very clear it was an advance that would be subtracted from his pay check.  
  
Warily, he shifted back his weight on one leg. "An actual meal? Meat and vegetables? Not the French or German equivalent of monja?"  
  
"Absolutely not!" The demon straightened up with glimmering eyes. "I haven't had a good plate of Sauerkraut in quite a while – and it's still early enough to avoid the real Christmas dinner rush. If we hurry, we might be able to find a spot that hasn't been reserved yet~"

"I've been wondering– do you... like, space-bend your stomach?" Shiro folded his hands behind his head and leaned back on the wooden bench, seriously considering to unbuckle his belt. "Because I have no idea how else you'd fit this on top of all the stuff you ate at the market."  
  
"What a question... Of course not. I told you, I have a very fast metabolism." The demon absent-mindedly sipped the last bit of his wine while staring at the painted figures on the wall.  
  
"Okay, time-bending then. Gotcha." The priest followed suit and grinned at the ceiling. "Man, I'm gonna explode. Good stuff, though."  
  
"One for the road?" Mephisto studied the bottom of his glass. "Would you like another beer?"  
  
"Depends. Is it part of the dinner?"  
  
"I beg your pardon?"  
  
Shiro leered down at his table-mate. "Are you still paying, 's what I mean."  
  
"My, my~ taking full advantage of my generosity, I see?"  
  
Shiro's grin grew wider. The demon didn't exactly seem to mind, with that lecherous smirk. He shrugged.  
  
"Gotta seize the opportunity, and such... What did you say again... I'm sure you had some nice words about Chance and shit at some point..."  
  
He scratched his chin. Couldn't remember exactly.  
  
Mephisto snickered and shook his head, flipping through the menu. "I suppose I could consider it dessert~"  
  
"As long as it's not _that_ kind of dessert." Mephisto gave him a quizzical look that only made him smile wider. "You know – the kugelhopping kind."  
  
A mischievous grin skimmed his face as he returned his eyes to the menu. "Are you sure? Kugelhopf is quite pleasant. Now, for an appropriate dessert drink... Ah!" _Perfect._ He signed a waiter over, and ordered–  
  
"An entire bottle?" Shiro's eyes darted suspiciously over the label. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"  
  
"The thing with mead is that it's very hard to have just one glass. You'll understand. And it's of fairly light alcohol percentage, no stronger than wine – certainly less than that rubbish you carry in your hip flask." Casting him a knowing look, the demon poured them two glasses of yellow, sweet-smelling liquid.  
  
Shiro sceptically held it up against the ceiling lights. Sugary stuff usually wasn't his thing. Then again, this didn't look like it was supposed to come with a tiny umbrella.  
  
Apparently, the demon could read his thoughts.  
  
"Try it." Mephisto clinked his glass against Shiro's, and winked. "It's a warrior's drink. I promise."  
  
Shiro snorted. "Fine, fine – but just so you know: I've seen you look, and _I_ promise it's gonna take more than a bottle of wine to get this warrior to agree to whatever it is you have in mind."

* * *

  
Ow. Auch.  
  
_  
What the–_  
  
White. Again. Not snow. And he wasn't wearing glasses. As far as he could tell. Things seemed foggy, though. Did he fall? Would explain the headache. But not why the ground was soft.  
  
Bouncy. Boing. There was a word for it. Something with a B. He groaned. Thinking hurt.  
  
Bed.  
  
_Bed._  
  
His entire body twitched, and he sat bolt upright before his sluggish brain could inform him that was a Bad Idea. He was punished relentlessly for it.  
  
"Holy mother of-! Aaahh..." He slapped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut in the hopes of stopping the baoding balls in his head from rolling back and forth through his skull, slamming into the back of his eye sockets. _Stop fucking ringing!  
  
_ "In case you were wondering..."  
  
Where was that other annoying sound coming from? He opened his eyes just a sliver and waited for the fog to clear up.  
  
"One bottle of mead..."  
  
There was a pinkish blob next to him. It talked.  
  
"Two shots of Jägermeister..."  
  
It grew out of the bed? No, wait, it was just wearing a robe in the same colour.  
  
"One glass of Kirsch..."  
  
It gained spikes as it talked. No, not spikes – fingers. With claws. It was counting.  
  
"A double whiskey..."  
  
Mephisto's triumphant, fanged grin slowly came into focus.  
  
"...And some Kugelhopf."

Shiro grabbed the nearest pillow.

 _So here it is, Merry Christmas  
Everybody's having fun  
Look to the future now  
It's only just begun_  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did they...? Or is Mephisto just being a tease? You decide~ ;) And don't worry if you don't recognise Inderpreet and Golem: they haven't been introduced in the main fic yet. ~~such is the life of a slow writer~~
> 
> -Rai Classica is Rome's classic music channel.
> 
> Songs:  
> Happy Christmas (war is over) - John Lennon & Yoko Ono, 1971  
> It doesn't have to be that way - Jim Croce, 1973  
> Have yourself a merry little Christmas - Frank Sinatra, 1948  
> Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade, 1973
> 
> -Meat and merry: Catholics traditionally do not eat meat at Christmas. Yule used to be a lot more blood thirsty, with sacrifices being made an all.
> 
> -Et tibi tabo claves regni caelorum: The entire text reads "Tu es Petrus et super hanc Petram aedificabo ecclesiam et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum". This is a passage from Matthew 16:19 and is found on the inside of the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica. "You are Peter and on this rock I shall build my church, and to you I give the keys to the kingdom of Heaven". The passage continues (and so does the Latin phrase, on one of the side arches of the church) with "and whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven, and what shall be released on Earth shall be released in Heaven."
> 
> -1982 is the first year the Vatican put up a tree.
> 
> -La Befana is fairytale figure, a good witch who brings presents on the 6th of January, Epiphany, the day of the three kings. She was invited to come along to greet baby Jesus and bring him presents, but was too busy cleaning (yes, really). Later she regretted it and followed them, but was too late- since then she has been wandering the Earth giving presents to all good children and coal to the naughty ones. You know, just in case one of them is Jesus.
> 
> -The military alphabet: Mephisto is spelling "baka" and "yabo"- meaning "idiot" and "slob" in Japanese.
> 
> -Chinese whispers is a game where whisper something to the person next to you, who then passes on whatever they understood from you to the person next to them, and so on. You usually end up with something vastly different than what you started out with.
> 
> -John Paul II's speech: Yup that is the actual speech, though I can't be held accounted for small translation errors from Italian to English.
> 
> -A Yōsei is the Japanese equivalent of a fairy, or pixie.
> 
> -Christmas fairs are a Big Thing in Europe, and especially in Germany. Strasbourg's market is the oldest, first held in 1570   
> (we have Reasons to assume Meph hung around therefor a while in the early Renaissance).
> 
> -Tangram: A Chinese puzzle game with geometric shapes. I briefly considered origami since that's more Japanese, but it isn't flat.
> 
> -The square they're on is called Place St. Etienne and has a fountain/ statue of a tit catcher. The bird species, of course.
> 
> -Kugelhopf & Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte: Look 'em up. Not tricking you, they really are cakes.
> 
> -Shiro is right: The tower of the Strasbourg Cathedral is 144 m high, while Saint Peter's is 137.
> 
> -The old house on the corner is Kammerzell house and was built in 1427. It's still in use as a hotel & restaurant.
> 
> -Prague's clock might be more famous, but Strasbourg also has an astronomical clock, displaying date, hour, stand of the moon and sun, zodiac signs... Figures of the apostles passing by the figure of a blessing Jesus, the figure of Death striking the hour, and an amazing mechanical rooster that cries three times with astonishing realism. Look it up on youtube or something, if you can.
> 
> -Brezel: Also known as pretzel.
> 
> -Sauerkraut (or choucroute) with different pork meat products is a local speciality. Bacheofe is what Shiro probably would have picked: a hearty stew of pork, lamb, beef, and vegetables.
> 
> -They're having dinner & drinks at Aux Armes Des Strasbourg - I picked it because it had mead and a nice, old-fashioned, very German interior.
> 
> -Shiro underestimated the alcohol level of German beer- and probably also that of Glühwein. Japanese beer is usually significantly lower.
> 
> -Mead is sweet, but a true Viking drink.
> 
> -Shiro's hip flask: I headcanon him as the kind of guy who carries a little nip to use during stake-outs and hikes. My main reason for that is a) he's got a stressful job, and b) later in life he seemed to be bribing/ bonding with Kuro with alcohol. A lot.
> 
> -Baoding balls are heavy cast iron balls with a little bell inside, used to rotate in one's hand for meditation purposes as well as medical (dexterity, motor skills & muscle strength).
> 
> -Jägermeister is a herb liquor, and Kirsch is distilled from cherries. Both pack a punch (35-40%).
> 
> Happy New Year! =^.^=


End file.
